


Escape Velocity

by Clarice Chiara Sorcha (claricechiarasorcha)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anakin Skywalker Logic™, Baby!Rey Will Save The World, Daddy Issues, Dreamsharing, Hux is Not Nice, Kylo Ren Is A Creeper, M/M, Politics, The Force Is Not Kind, brendol hux is an asshole
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-15
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-06-02 11:09:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 135,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6563896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claricechiarasorcha/pseuds/Clarice%20Chiara%20Sorcha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brendol Hux Jr., only son of a former First Order commandant who sold out to the New Republic, struggles to find a means of advancement in a political world that rejects his Imperial pedigree at every turn.</p><p>Then he meets Ben “Call me Kylo” Solo, Jedi school dropout, and the trajectory of both their spiralling lives cannot be but irrevocably altered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is something of a ~~probably temporary~~ experiment; for some reason I got it into my head a couple weeks back, building the LEGO Ghostbusters firehouse while watching first season _Smallville_ , that it would be kind of hilarious to see younger versions of Hux and Kylo meeting in the New Republic. From the way this turned out there's clearly more to the story (for starters, Hux isn't as relentlessly sarcastic throughout the narrative as I usually write him; he needs a few more years practice, apparently), but I'm fairly dubious about whether or not anyone would want to _read_ anymore of this. So: yeah. This is what I have so far, for what it's worth.
> 
> In other news, for those who wonder: Hux is twenty-two in this story, while Kylo is seventeen. And this _is_ only the beginning of a story that would theoretically be rather long, so if things seem unanswered or characters are doing odd things, bear in mind that this would be dealt with later.
> 
> And if you do read any of it: thank you. <3 I'm fairly down on everything I write at the moment, but it seemed a little wasteful to come up with 16k of writing and then just trash it outright. I guess I'll just have to do it later, ha ha. <3

Here, in the dark, the only offered light came from the hushed illumination of the slowly rotating holo set at the centre of the table. One voice rose, clear and crisp as it detailed the data it laid out before the audience. Hux’s own remained silent, caught in his throat beneath the flush creeping up beneath his collar. But, no – there _was_ a second voice: one in the back of his mind, shouting. Demanding to be let out. To _drown_ out. To destroy.

Hux held his silence. Before him – before them all, his own still stiff body but one amongst many – Chadri went on, voice light and lively, hands gesticulating with easy grace. He moved them too much, in Hux’s opinion. Not that he would offer it. Not that he would be listened to, even if he did. This particular junior staffer had no time for Brendol Hux Jr.

Except when stealing his ideas, apparently, and passing them off wholesale as his own.

The lights came on with sudden sharp glare, flickering up to full power. Chadri had fallen silent, though he almost vibrated with self-satisfied energy. For all his clear enthusiasm he remained an unremarkable looking young man; neither handsome nor ugly, his hair very dark and his eyes very blue. Hux was willing to admit that he at least dressed well, his lanky frame well-suited to the simple tailoring favoured by the Uyter fashion elite. There was a reason why Hux himself dressed much the same way, his own clothing high-collared and well-fitted, the long open-sleeved coat hung over the back of his chair.

Senator Gillen had risen from her chair, her movement the cool fluid grace of a mountain stream. “Very interesting, Chadri. I should like to discuss these ideas with you further, though I have an appointment to keep with Senator Depallo.” Her smile, a lovely and quiet thing, felt a benediction as she passed her eyes over the room. “Please, if there is anything else anyone else would care to add to Chadri’s presentation, I would very much appreciate your input. Feel free to bring your ideas to the morning briefing, tomorrow.”

Usually Hux drew an odd sort of peace from her presence. Today he sat very still, and very silent as the chamber erupted into motion and sound. The light chatter washed over him as a river while the others stood, gathering holopads and styluses, random pieces of flimsi disappearing into folders and bags. His own datapad sat before him, his eyes fixed upon the faint reflection he could see behind the lines of code marching across its pristine surface. The blink at the corner of his screen indicated an urgent message received. Still he did not move.

“Is there something wrong, Hux?”

He blinked, rapid and startled; inbred instinct should have had him on his feet, one hand reaching for the small knife sheathed in his boot. But he had repressed it enough times that now he simply looked up, expression bland, and hands only lightly curled instead of fisted to makeshift weapon.

Nahani Gillen stood beside his chair, head lightly tilted, pale hair like starlight upon darkly-clad shoulders. Her usually impassive features held a hint of concern, that gently maternal air that had helped her people elect her to the Senate.

His own smile, carefully chosen and displayed, was one he’d been told was charming. Though most would then whisper behind his back that it held a certain serpentine quality. Even in the deeply political maelstrom of Coruscanti life, the name _Hux_ had earned a taint not easily erased by skill or easy social graces.

“Hux?” she repeated, and he blinked again, just once.

“Apologies, Senator. I was deep in thought.”

“Yes, I could see as much. Chadri’s presentation has brought up many an interesting point indeed.” The steel-grey of her eyes reminded him that this was a woman who missed little, even when she spoke with a conversational lightness most would have expected at a summer picnic. “I am not surprised to find they are relevant to your own work,” she added, and the tightening edges of his practised smile began to hurt.

“I am sure I will be able to refine my thoughts and offer them to you later, when you have concluded your meeting with Senator Depallo.”

“Oh, I won’t be back this evening. We are to have dinner, together, and then I shall return to my apartments.” One lovely hand rose, smoothed over the elegant lines of her robe. “But we should speak, you and I. Come morning.”

His eyes flicked down again, to the notification still blinking at the top of his holopad. He had few matters of import scheduled for the following day, though little would ever take priority over the only Senator who had even entertained the idea of hiring him. “Yes, at the briefing. I will endeavour to have something of use to you before then.”

“We could meet beforehand, perhaps.”

A faint hope curled low in his abdomen, though he paid it little heed. He’d known enough of how easily such a fragile thing could be crushed, to not allow himself to place stock in it. Only his own self could be permitted such faith.

“I will look forward to it,” he said, and now his smile had evolved to something lighter, more genuine. Crossing the room, he pressed the panel, allowing it to hiss open before he stepped back once again. “I should go and make sure I will have information fit enough to discuss with you.”

Her smile remained where she did not, crossing the threshold and leaving him alone. “Good afternoon, then, Hux.”

He bowed his head, did not look up until the door had again slipped closed. “Senator.”

For all the lights had returned to full illumination, the room felt startlingly dull without her presence. With lips pressed tight together, Hux returned to the table, his face pale and drawn in the high polished shine. He ignored it, instead gathering together his things, slipping them neatly into the satchel. Drawing himself tall, schooling his features to bland disinterest as he shouldered it, he at last moved to the door.

Upon its other side, a figure leaned against the wall; as Hux passed, it drew itself to life, then to full movement. “Trying to undermine me already then, Little Hux?”

With eyes fixed clearly ahead, Hux paused for no man. “I did not stay to speak with the Senator.” Even as he smirked inside, his voice remained flat, utterly without inflection. “She paused to speak with me.”

And he kept moving down the corridors. There were few things in life he would truly thank his father for, but that Hux Sr. insisted he keep up his physical education was one. Chadri was not a short man, nor an unfit one, but Hux’s peripheral vision said the man had to make an effort to keep up with Hux’s mindless military stride.

“The work is _mine_ ,” he said, the faint shortness of his breath quirking at one corner of Hux’s mouth; he increased his pace just an imperceptible beat.

“So you have said.”

“You can protest it all you like.” Chadri always had talked too much; even now, he could not keep his mouth shut, cheeks taking a high flush, eyes bright where they attempted to glare right through him. “I have all the research on my holopad. The entire history; searches, called records, correspondence.”

“Yes, well.” Hux’s fingers tightened over the strap of his satchel; a millisecond of pressure, then released. “If one cannot be proud of the work they have collated, then at least it seems sensible to be sure one might be proud of the thoroughness with which one has plagiarised it.”

And Chadri scoffed, even though his breath was edging terribly close to laboured. “You can’t prove anything.”

“Perhaps not.”

One foot came down harder than the last, as close to a stomp as a grown man could manage while still walking. “So don’t go running to Mummy,” he said, hissed and harsh. “Unless you want to sound like a whining little pissant. Oh wait – you do already. I’m not sure the difference would be noted. Carry on, Little Hux.”

He drew up so quick Chadri nearly tripped over his own surprise. Hux himself stood very still, and very silent. Before him, Chadri drew up his full height, enfolded a modicum of dignity about himself, and raised a narrow eyebrow. “Ooh, I finally got through, did I?” With arms folded across his chest, his eyes burned again too bright by half. “And here I thought you were nothing but a little droid, produced in perfect chrome shine from daddy’s little factory.”

Hux only raised an eyebrow of his own. No words were necessary. Chadri had made this almost too easy.

“It’s the only reason she ever wanted you,” he added, spite dripping from each syllable, a watered down venom that had Hux releasing an exaggerated sigh.

“The academy on Uyter was for _Stormtroopers_ , Dio. The academy I attended based on the one at Arkanis was for _officers_. There’s a distinct difference between the two.”

“Yes, and you ought to learn it.” He came too close, the sweet scent of his favoured cologne utterly at odds with the sharp bitterness of his words. “You were trained as an officer of the First Order. But this is the New Republic.” And his lips twisted, eyes very dark. “You might as well have been a ‘trooper, Little Hux – because with your name, you’ll never be anything but another drone.” Only now did he lean back, chin tilted high, his smirk wide and almost lovely. “Fortunately for you, there are those of us who can take your work and make it useful.” With that he turned, step light as he set off down the corridor. “You can always thank me, later.”

He supposed he probably would. Hux had never actually killed another person, not directly. But murdering Chadri Dio with his own hands would be an intensely pleasurable experience. Messy, perhaps, and he did hate mess. But there were ways to minimise that. Although with the fury flowing in his veins, pure plasma fire beneath the ice of his skin and expression, he _wanted_ the spurt of hot blood. He wanted his hands around Chadri’s throat – and then in his viscera, rooting through the man’s guts while the idiot screamed through crushed vocal chords.

Yes, it would be messy: but rather satisfying, besides. He could live with that. Even if Chadri Dio certainly wouldn’t.

Thankfully his shared office was not with Chadri, just two other junior staffers of the Senator. Both women, and both younger: another human from Uyter, and a Twi’lek who would have terrified him, had he been as stupid as the other men who kept propositioning her. He could admit she _was_ aesthetically lovely, but there would be little real advancement for him in sleeping with her, at least at her current level. Certainly she would have been worthwhile if he sought out sex purely for pleasure, but he simply had enough to do without adding such entanglements to his schedule.

As he slipped behind his desk, he did regret one thing; it would be more difficult to work out exactly where Chadri had accessed his datacloud, given they did not work in close proximity. And despite his flaws, the man was no fool. In fact, Chadri was gifted with technology – but Hux had talents of his own.

And yet, for all he had plenty of work to do – both in tracing the exact manner in which Chadri had so neatly sabotaged his voluntary sideproject for the Senator, and the actual work he had been assigned to – he could not settle to it. The air felt peculiar, thick and strange, the faint electric hum of approaching storm.

 Hux had never had much enthusiasm for the capitol buildings. They’d been the Jedi temple once, but even that could not explain his visceral uneasiness. His usual careful discipline allowed him to work around such whimsical fancy, but with a sigh, he pushed back from the desk. While his own apartments – those given to his father – were cramped and inconvenient, they were at least nothing like these sweeping halls. And, at this hour, his father would not be home. It would at least be quiet there.

The other two staffers scarcely glanced up as he began to tidy away his desk; when he moved to the door he offered only a brief nod to indicate he would be leaving. The faint taste of thunder on the air seemed to grow only thicker as he stepped into the hall, his overcoat draped over his arms, held before him like a shield. Hux was not one to stand down on formality, but the Coruscanti summer heat proved stifling even in these airy corridors. Even then Hux would not contemplate removing his upper tunic, nor undoing the topmost buttons of the shirt beneath. There were limits to the slaveries of comfort. Hux had learned long ago to live with inconvenience.

He moved through the corridors with his head held high. Even now he would still garner the odd look. One could pass it off as his height, his military bearing – and his hair. But even without all those, he was still Hux the Younger. For that, at least, everyone knew his name.

Moving out onto the street granted him blessed anonymity. The rich scent of food stalls assaulted his nostrils, but it was the more acrid scent of burning fuel from the passing traffic that made him screw up his nose. He could search out a transport, but despite the heat and the stench, he often found it easier to walk. His home was nearby. They had not dared place Commandant Hux far from the government he had betrayed the First Order for.

Deep in contemplation, the commotion to his left registered only as dull background noise. Only at the whine overhead did he stop, though the sharp bang that followed shuddered down his spine in a burst of bitter adrenaline. Looking up, he heard screams that grew only louder, rattling in his ears. They were not his own. Not that it mattered. Logic told him instead that very shortly he would not be able to scream at all.

And then self-preservation kicked in, quickened by military training; Hux went down, hands over his head, as he threw his body into a tight roll. But he had little enough momentum, and it was too large. He would never get out of its shadow; it grew, cold and dark, above his head. Wedged now in the gutter, Hux pressed his eyes closed tighter still, knees under his chin.

_What is taking it so long?_

“Hey.” The voice, faintly strained, sliced through him with sharp irritation. “Hey, _ginger_. Can you move? I can’t hold this forever.”

Panic should have kept his muscles frozen, joints locked. But then Hux had been taught the limitations of panic a long time ago, and found himself looking up with an ease that almost hurt. Across from him, on the other side of the deathly silent street, stood a lanky young man. Younger than he was, certainly; probably in the last hoorah of adolescence. But that was not the odd thing about him – no, the odd thing was the way the kid stood there like an idiot, hands outstretched and palms opened wide.

“No, really.” The kid grimaced, one knee buckling, listing him alarmingly to the left. “You’ve got a lovely backside and all, it’s nice to look at, but can you _move_ it? Like, over _here_?”

Hux rarely stumbled. He supposed he could allow it just this once as he lurched upon from the street, out of the dark shadow, and into the brighter light about the young man. There, on the ground, he winced around the taste of bile even as he swallowed back rising nausea. He could feel the eyes of a dozen people upon him, their bodies frozen in indistinct indecision. Instinct told them to move forward, to drag him to safer haven.

But then, he felt the shift of their attention to the boy beside him, and they did not move closer. When he followed their line of sight, their hesitation crystallised into perfect sense. His own mouth turned dry, skin rippling in sudden chill gooseflesh.

 A transport shuttle had fallen from the sky. Even now terrified faces peered out in clear panic from behind cracked transparisteel, white and drawn and despairing of death. And yet, they were not dead. Instead they – and the malfunctioned transport, engines sparking red death – were held at a flat height of perhaps six feet from the ground.

The boy’s arms had now begun to move down. A deep crease etched itself into his pale brow, sweat standing out upon his skin even amongst the dark freckles and moles there. Gentle as the motion appeared, his tremor only increased. With two feet to go, he swore; a second later, the entire thing crashed to the ground, to stifled screams and shouts. Even as the crowd made a little rush forward the boy went onto one knee, hand to his head.

“ _Fuck_.”

Only Hux went to him, his own feet feeling very far away for all they remained steady enough to hold him aloft. “Are you all right?”

Blinking up from behind damp hair, the boy seemed caught between disbelief and outright amusement. “Shouldn’t that be _my_ line?”

“I’m not the one who just…what was that?” And for all the uproar behind them – tears, panic, someone shouting for some sort of extinguisher – Hux could only stare at the boy. Dark hair, pale skin, too-large eyes; the clothing was fine enough, though not at the level of the flashy couture currently parading the capital’s streets. “You…”

“I’m not a Jedi,” he said, too fast, and too sharp by half. “But yes. That was the Force.”

Beneath the defensiveness, Hux could taste the familiar tang of fierce pride. Only then did he turn, the burst of an extinguisher sharp against his ears. People were still being helped from the vehicle, supported by the willing arms of people who could no longer be only observers. And yet, few eyes fell upon them – and those that did look to them did not do so with thankfulness, nor hostility: but instead, a strange kind of reverent fear.

Hux looked away. “Who are you?”

“No, no.” By now sitting on his arse on the pavement, the kid frowned up at him, hair pushed back from his face. “Who are _you_?”

Though hit with the odd compulsion to put himself down beside him, Hux frowned at the pavement, and remained standing. The world had admittedly taken on an odd spin, but he pushed it aside as he spoke again. “You saved my life.”

“Yes, well.” Hands rose, then fell. “I had to.”

Hux had nothing to say to that, and the kid let out an explosive sigh.

“I _saw_ you. Before it happened. Walking away from me.” And before Hux could even begin to process such flawed information, he added, “I meant it, you know. You really do have a lovely backside.”

And Hux scowled down at him, even as he began to brush at the street filth that had accumulated on his once-pristine trousers. “How could you even see it?” he asked, and then, more importantly, “Where’s my coat?”

“I want to know your name.”

And Hux’s head snapped around, meeting those dark eyes. Here, now, they seemed to fill the sky: the clouding over of atmosphere with the vacuum of space.

_A night without stars; a galaxy without light._

Cursing, backing away, Hux again tasted bile. The boy’s eyes widened, suddenly just dark and wide and utterly normal. And his own head _ached_.

“Hey – _hey_. Are you all right?” A hand closed over his shoulder; Hux stiffened, but even as he shook it off, the kid only held tighter. Something like joy, something like suspicion coloured his words in shades Hux hadn’t even known existed. “But no, really – how did you _do_ that?”

And when he turned, the world really did lurch sideways. “Did I hit my head?” Squinting, now, Hux scowled as the face of his rescuer, fracturing, twisting in kaleidoscope motion. “My head hurts.”

“No. You didn’t hit it. But you…” And his hand wrapped around his, the strangest parody of a handshake. “I’m Ben. Ben Solo.” He came too close, his scent somewhere between sweet spice and mineral oil. “But you can call me Kylo.” His eyes were searching, too large and too dark by half. “I want you to call me Kylo.”

Hux’s stomach lurched again, headache spiking with dizzying silver shard. “I think you’re crazy.”

And the boy actually laughed, mouth almost as wide as his strange dark eyes. “Well, you wouldn’t be the first.”

Hux was going to say something about how _wonderfully_ comforting that comment was when he passed out.

 

*****

 

“No good will come of it, Brendol.”

Hux kept his eyes upon the plate, fingers tight about his fork as he carefully segmented the hash into bite-sized portions. “It would be only polite.”

With a faint snort, his father flicked to a new screen on his holopad, not even looking up to retrieve his cup of black caf. “He is the son of Senator Organa.”

“I realise that.”

Setting the cup down again, his weathered face scowled over whatever it was he read; it seemed the holopad had committed some sort of personal affront against him. “Your position in Senator Gillen’s staff is tenuous enough,” he said, and something of his original accent roughened the edges of his words. “If you start interfering with the Organa faction, you will be out on your ass before the meridian.”

Hux closed his eyes. Then, he opened them. “He saved the life of your son. Your _only_ son,” he remarked, casual as the accident that had almost taken his life. He knew it for a mistake even before he added with easy guile, “Perhaps you’d like to come say thank you, yourself?”

One hand slammed down on the table, open-palmed and harsh; the condiment shakers rattled unhappily in their cradles. “Don’t take that attitude with me.” And when Hux glanced up he met cold eyes, the exact shade of his own, lips curled back beneath the greying whiskers. “You are making a mistake – one you seem determined to commit even when I advise you otherwise. I am merely assuring you that I will be able to do nothing for you when you find yourself outside the capitol.”

His cheeks twitched, nails pressed hard into the silverware. “You couldn’t do anything for me before,” he said, perfectly pleasant. “Everything I have now, I did for myself.”

“For what good it’s done you.” Reaching for the pot, he poured himself a fresh cup, gnarled hand rock-steady about the grip. “I’ve said my piece, Brendol. Run along and make your own mistakes, and then clear up after them yourself. I have work of my own to attend to.”

The clack of the pot back on the table signalled the end of the conversation. Shaking with fury, Hux looked down to the neatly laid tableau of his meal. His appetite, never particularly voracious, had quite evaporated. But as the son of a commandant, a child of a mass exodus and exile, he was quite aware it would not be worth the argument not to finish his breakfast.

A clear morning awaited him outside, though he kept his coat hung over his shoulders. The heat had not begun yet, but the met reports had promised a stifling day to come. Hux frowned up at the smog gathered overhead and could not argue the point. And then he dismissed the world entirely and began a brisk walk, assured in his directions despite the fact he had never been to this particular destination.

Two days had passed since the accident. Much as he’d argued the point and the leave, he had been excused from his work until the following day. Senator Gillen had herself refused to allow him back. Upon hearing his protests she had even come to the apartments, lovely in her robes of state. She’d paused but a moment, fleeting and precious on her way to the capitol complex. Even as he’d smiled to see her, he hadn’t wanted her here; the assigned accommodation was too small, and too plain by half for one such as her.

And her smile had been gentle, knowing. “Stay home and get better, Hux.” Her hand had been soft against his own, a gentle press of soft skin. “There will still be work enough for you when you return.”

His father had not been there. He could but be thankful for that. Brendol Sr. had been scornful enough when he had arrived at the med centre to collect him, though he’d come only after his own workday was complete. Not permitted to leave without escort, Hux had spent hours in an active waiting room, completing his own work while steadying ignoring the tide of injured and infirm that swirled around him. There had been no concussion, no visible injury. “Shock, perhaps,” a med tech had offered, already turning away; she’d only just missed the curl of scorn upon Hux’s dry lips.

For his part, he blamed those strange dark eyes – and the headache he’d had, after looking into them for but a moment. It hadn’t cleared until the next morning. Even now, it made him think twice about seeing the odd creature again.

The other issue that had stayed his hand was the simple fact he’d received no contact from his apparent saviour. Admittedly the boy probably hadn’t been given Hux’s name, though a search had brought up his own identity swiftly enough. Ben Solo, only son of Senator Leia Organa and her common-law husband, a Corellian “businessman” rarely seen about Coruscant.

Hux had suspected as much even before he’d confirmed it; everyone in the capitol was more than familiar with Leia Organa and her peculiar family. She currently served as a Senator for Corellia, given her own homeworld of Alderaan had not survived the war. Hux rather supposed the family did not need to know Hux had detailed models of both Death Stars. He’d brought from his own homeworld of Arkanis as a child of four, and had built them during his childhood upon the star destroyers after they’d been driven to the Unknown Regions by the collapse of the Imperial regime.

But then he’d never thought of Alderaan except in the most depersonalised of ways, even as he built the things. The Death Stars themselves had been of far more interest; even now he knew their engineering with a lover’s careful intimacy. He’d also rather enjoyed designing his own variations upon the theme from late childhood, had in fact been beginning the process of refining childish idea with actual hard knowledge when his father had defected.

The grand house stood at the end of a small cul de sac, somehow stately rather than dwarfed by the taller buildings behind. But then, it was a neighbourhood built to cater to such; he’d received more than one strange look for simply strolling down the impeccable pavement.

At the gate he stated both identity and purpose to the guard. The bemusement on his face proved but a temporary impediment; Hux was waved him through while the guard murmured something half-intelligible into his comm. Hux was not at all surprised to be greeted at the door by another guard. This one guided him through the grand foyer, dressed in marble and cool silk tapestries, and to a small receiving room set to its left.

He had not waited there long when a house-servant arrived, a small woman dressed in white. Hux stood; his palms, pressed together now, proved clammy and damp. He could not even be sure why as he fixed a smile upon his lips, nodded to the woman who would barely have stood as high as his ribcage.

“I was hoping to speak with Ben Solo.”

She nodded, pleasant but brisk. “May I have your name?”

“Hux. Brendol Hux.” He blurted out the next before he could even think the words. “We met on the street.”

The woman blinked, said nothing. Swallowing hard, Hux felt his smile congeal to something quite cold, even as it changed not in size nor shape.

“He’ll know who I am.” He even managed a dry chuckle, equilibrium returning as he added, “The man with the red hair?”

_And the lovely backside._ But that he kept that to himself as the woman nodded, murmured her leave and left him alone. Carefully smoothing out his trousers, though not even the walk had creased them, Hux took his seat again. It would be rude to take out his holopad and work while waiting. Instead he satisfied himself by taking in the large canvas displayed above the ornamental fireplace. A sweeping landscape, it showed a land both green and very lovely. Hardly Coruscant, and certainly not the dreary climes of Arkanis. Perhaps Corellia, though his suspicions told him that this was more likely the fabled pastoral paradise of lost Alderaan.

“Ben isn’t here.”

Hus startled, turned even as he rose, already falling into a well-practised stance. An older man slouched in the doorway, staring hard at him from beneath a mess of salt and pepper hair. Despite the simplicity of his clothing, stark against the measured opulence of the house itself, Hux knew he was not as out of place as his appearance suggested. But then, he was still known to him only by reputation.

_And how our reputations do precede us all_ , he noted, the man’s cold glare quite all the information he required. “Ah,” he said, and surreptitiously wiped damp palms on his lower hips. “Mr. Solo.”

Stepping forward, Hux put one hand out. Solo ignored it utterly, eyes fixed upon him, narrowed and dark. “Kriff knows where the boy’s got to at this hour,” he said, too sudden, eyes narrow. “I’d like to say it was some fool Jedi nonsense, but who’s to even know what’s in his head these days?”

Hux only blinked. And the man rolled his eyes, even as he skimmed them over his body with the easy disdain of a merchant. He might have struggled to hold his composure, if not for the years spent beneath the yoke of the First Order.

And Solo snorted. “He saved your life, right?”

“I – yes.” Hux kept his head high. “Yes, he did.”

“And I guess you want to thank him for it?”

“I do.”

“Fine. I’ll tell him.” Pushing himself further upright, hand back through the riot of his hair, Solo nodded with curt efficiency in the direction from which Hux had come. “If you can’t see yourself out, there’s plenty of stiffs around here who will throw you out. You don’t even have to ask real nice. They’ll do it for free.”

A moment later the man was gone, leaving Hux standing. Silent. Staring.

But he had been raised in the academy. He had been raised among exiles. He knew what it was to scratch his pride up from the dirt. With what few belongings he had arrived with, Hux turned towards the exit, and walked away.

 

*****

 

“Hux.”

Glancing up from his screen, he found one of his officemates standing just beside him -- the Twi’lek girl. Rana. Blinking owlishly, wondering if perhaps he would be needing glasses after all, he said, “Yes?”

“You have a visitor.”

With a furrowed brow he glanced to his dim-screened holopad; it didn’t need to be on for him to know what its schedule would say. “I don’t recall making any appointments.”

With a snort she flicked her fingers over her lekku. “Well, I’m not your secretary,” she said, and inclined her head towards the door. “But there’s a kid in there asking for you.”

Hux frowned through it, as if he could sense the unexpected guest with nothing but the force of his own sheer irritation. “Are you sure he doesn’t want my father?”

“Who would?”

He should argue that. Instead he only snorted, pressed to his feet as he reached for his overcoat. “Fair point.” Settling the thick fabric about his shoulders, as always appreciating the way it bulked them out somewhat, he flicked his screen to privacy mode. “If anyone else calls for me, I can’t imagine I’ll be long.”

He could hear her muttering something about secretaries again as he slipped into the corridor. Finding it far easier to ignore rather than engage, he focused upon the meeting room they shared with numerous other staff in the same area. Slipping inside unannounced, he closed the door before turning. And then he stopped dead.

Reclined on one of the small chairs – not that Hux could see _how_ , given they were straight-backed and functional – Ben Solo flipped his hand up, gave a light little wave of long fingers. “I thought you might want to see me,” he drawled, with a casual nonchalance that Hux could imagine him practicing in front of a mirror. “To say thank you, and all that.”

For a long moment, Hux said nothing. Only after he had crossed the room, taking a place on the chair furthest from his guest, did he deign to speak. “I did come to see you.”

The chill of the words only made him blink, just once. “Did you.”

“Your father didn’t approve.”

He rocked upwards in a flash, pale skin abruptly flushed and dark eyes turned nearly black. “Did he kick you out?”

The snarl of it might have been terrifying to one who did not have to face off against Brendol Hux Sr. every morning. With a snort Hux crossed one long leg over the other, caught the reflection from the windows in the high polish of his boots. “Nothing quite so dramatic as all that,” he said, the man’s narrowed gaze a faint ache in the back of his memories. “But he did make it clear I wasn’t to come visiting again.”

Ben had lurched to his feet, hands fisted; as Hux watched with faint interest, he began a strangely purposeful pace of the room, hair wild and eyes wilder still. “It’s not even his house!” he said, turning on his heel. “You can come around whenever you want.” His mouth twisted, the determined set of his features actually making him appear even younger than his soft features alone. “And you _should_.”

He could feel something like a headache coming on again. Perhaps his thought at the hospital hadn’t been entirely wrong; Ben Solo might have indeed hurt his head simply by existing within close vicinity. “We haven’t even been properly introduced.”

Rolling his eyes, he stepped forward, hand out. “I’m Kylo.”

He took it without even thinking; the grip was surprisingly strong, the palms and fingers rough and callused. And he frowned. “Your name is Ben Solo.”

“Yes.” With an odd gravitas he straightened; rather than making him look older, again it gave him the distinct air of a child playing at an adult’s game. “But you can call me Kylo.” Though he clearly could not resist the sly smile when he added, “And you’re Brendol Hux. The Younger.”

“Yes.” His own haughty expression, he knew, made even those most scornful of his name think twice about their muttered insults. “But you can call me Hux.”

The sudden laughter felt too loud in the small space; Hux winced, glanced to the door even as the boy stood, threw himself down in the chair at his side: it brought him too close by half. “You’re weird,” he announced, and Hux didn’t even look at him.

“I’m not sure you’re in any position to be saying that.”

For a moment it seemed as though he hovered on the edge of offense. Then he snorted, dragging one hand back through his wild hair. It had been until recently shorn short, by its odd rise and fall; it had grown back in odd patches, scraggly and strange. But then if Ben – _Kylo_ – pulled at it like this all the time, perhaps that was only to be expected.

But for all his earlier effusiveness, Kylo appeared to have lapsed into an odd silence. It would be easiest just to stand, to leave the odd creature to himself, but Hux was painfully aware he had not even said thank you yet. “Everything I’ve read said you were away, at school,” he said, sudden. “Given what happened out there, I’m assuming it was Jedi school?”

Though Hux himself had but rarely indulged in a good sulk, he recognised the beginnings of one on the scrunched up face. “You could call it that.”

“So what are you doing here?”

“Why?” And there was something almost nasty in the way he added, light, “Because, just a reminder: if I wasn’t here, you’d be squashed on that footpath out there.”

Taking out his holopad, Hux flicked the screen to life, frowned down at his messages, piled up like a transport jam. “Duly noted,” he said, and then gave the boy nothing more.

Kylo lasted a full minute longer than Hux would have predicted. With a snort, one hand fell down, hit hard against the upholstery of the chair. “I got kicked out. Yes, _kicked out_ , even when my uncle was the instructor.”

Hux raised one eyebrow even as he began to staccato-tap a reply to the most urgent of his messages. “If it makes you feel any better, I had some of the direst final scores in the academy where my father was commandant.”

The sharp bark of laughter actually sounded surprised. “You don’t strike me as the stupid type.”

“I should hope not.” His smile was thin, fading as he curled his phrasing around a particularly delicate concept; he always had preferred the spoken word over the written, though he’d been sure to master both. “However, my father believed his staff were stupid enough to doctor my marks for his approval.”

The strange thundercloud of his earlier mood seemed to have lifted, though Hux did not quite like the predatory curiosity upon Kylo’s features now. It raised the fine hairs on his skin, a different kind of storm brewing in the still air. “I’ve never met your father.”

“You are not being deprived of any particularly significant experience.”

“Maybe not.” There was no need to be surprised when Kylo leaned forward, elbows on knees, fixed attention a laserbeam arcing between them. “Can I meet him?”

Completing his comm message, Hux hit send, moved onto the next in the same familiar rhythm of pure efficiency. “Why?”

“Curiosity. Not that it really matters.” And he was leaning back, shifting the broad shoulders; even in the loose fit of his shirt, Hux had earlier noted the muscle there; he kept his eyes firmly upon his work as Kylo said, offhand and easy, “You should come for dinner at my house. Meet my mother.”

At last Hux looked up, brow furrowed as one side of his mouth quirked up. “I don’t believe your father would approve.”

“My father isn’t _here._ ” The ugly look that crossed his face, oddly, gave him the age the mismatch of his features usually denied him. But it was fleeting, a shadow behind stars; a moment later, his face had returned to the obstinate set of a child. “Forget the _should_. You _will_.”

Another message completed, another task removed from the schedule. “I’m not a cadet to be ordered about, Solo.”

“ _Kylo_.” Mutinous, now, he tilted his head upward with an imperious hauteur best suited to someone in far finer dress. “Dinner. My mother’s house. Tonight.”

“I don’t think—”

His hand smacked the chair again. Hard. “You think too much.”

Double-tapping a message destined only for deletion, Hux allowed himself a delicate snort. “You don’t know me.”

“Oh, believe me. I know enough.” Like a localised hurricane he blew across the room, the door opening before he’d even reached the control panel. Silhouetted there, he glared at Hux with clear demand. “Tonight,” he added, and then was gone; for all he’d thrown himself around the room, Kylo moved with a startling grace. But it bothered Hux more that the automatic door still stood open even though Kylo had been well clear for long enough that it should have closed.

Muting his holopad, Hux crossed the floor with a frown. Several presses of the control panel yielded no better result. He would have to call maintenance. He didn’t look forward to explaining the circumstances, found himself wondering if he could invoice Kylo’s mother’s estate for any repair that might be needed.

“Was that Organa’s kid?”

Long practice allowed Hux to feign no surprise at Chadri’s sudden appearance – and, fluid a concept as the truth could be, Hux noted no real gain in a lie told now. His fixed gaze was still a cold and unforgiving thing when he turned it upon the other staffer.

“Yes.”

Reclining back against the wall – he enjoyed the position, seemed to think it gave him an aura of mystery; to Hux, he looked merely to be badly propping up the building – Chadri stared in the direction Kylo had apparently taken. “He saved you, right? Some Jedi trick, right out there on the street?”

“Apparently.”

The smirk he wore was a smug and self-satisfied thing. “So, this is how you jump ship: leaving Gillen for Organa, using the kid as a starting point.” And he leaned forward from the waist, a serpentine gesture to match the way his smile faintly revealed his incisors. “But here’s a helpful tip, Little Hux – if you wanted an in, you should have saved _his_ life, not the other way around.”

Turning, his gaze sliding off the other man like oil over water, Hux returned to the chair when he’d been seated. “I don’t believe that’s how the Force works.”

“It doesn’t work at all.”

How easily they forgot – even here, in the New Republic. It seemed so easy for them to dismiss that which had saved them. The First Order, instead, had never forgotten that which had brought the Empire down around their ears.

“Ordinarily, I would agree – even with you, Dio.” With his datapad now firmly in hand, Hux favoured him a thin smile, razor-sharp and glittering. “But if not for said Force, I would be dead. I’m willing to give destiny some benefit of the doubt, for that alone.” Even as Chadri’s fool mouth opened again, Hux moved past in sleek grace, never once looking back. “Good day.”

And yet Hux had not really believed he would do it, until he stood outside the house for a second time. But this time he was recognised, welcomed in, drawn past the receiving room to another chamber. Though smaller; it held a warm and cosy air; the bar in the corner appeared fully stocked, and Hux felt his hands twitch. As the only one there, he could hardly serve himself, but his throat seemed to have never felt so dry.

When the door swished open, he turned, found nothing in his immediate eyeline. Instead something small and dark barrelled first into the room, and then into his legs. One hand shot out, steadied himself upon the bar as he looked down. With pudgy arms now firmly locked about his knees, a small girl stared up at him, her pale eyes wide and worshipful.

“Can I keep you?”

Hux opened his mouth. Closed it. Then she smiled, and he could barely begin to try again. “I—”

“ _Rey_.” They both turned; Kylo lurked before the closed door, frown dire. Hux had not even heard it open again. “Let him go.”

Her pout would have put even his best to shame. “No,” she said, and pressed her cheek to his knee. “He’s so pretty! And his hair is _amazing_.” Closing her eyes in childish bliss, she snuggled alarmingly close, said to no-one in particular, “I want to keep him.”

With his hands firmly at his sides, Hux raised an eyebrow at Kylo. With a faintly harassed air he passed a hand back through his hair, shrugged with a helpless exasperation. “Sorry.”

“Well, is she removable? Or are we now bonded for life?”

With a laugh, Rey let him go. The devilish glint in her eyes was no comfort when she said with cheerful glee, “Yeah, we kind of are! Kylo rescued you. So you belong to us, now.”

The faint frisson in the air shivered through him like the approach of lightning strike. But Kylo only rolled his dark eyes, then turned them to the bar with a longing quite at odds with his training. “She takes everything so literally,” he muttered, and Hux folded his hands over his chest, looked down at the small golden shadow still lingering at his side.

“Who is she?”

“She’s my cousin.”

The girl glanced up at the spoken moniker, face open and delighted. “I’m Rey!”

He wanted to sigh. Instead, he gave a graceful nod usually reserved for encounters with Senators and other high-ranking officials. “Hullo, Rey.”

In answer she only beamed. Taken aback, Hux found he had nothing more to say to her, to this beautiful brilliant thing. A shining jewel in desert sands. It reminded him of the day his own father had taken him from the Order.

Then, from the pitted transparisteel of the decrepit ship’s viewports, Hux had watched the brilliance of the destroyer fading into the black. A remnant of the Imperial era, it had been his home for ten years. He had made it his business to know every inch of her. Even now he felt that ancient yearning for the new Resurgent-class destroyers. Then they had been but a design, though no doubt they had since become a reality. If he saw one now, it would only be a holo – if, indeed, the Republic would even admit they existed at all. Such opposing military might would be hardly likely to make the standard public broadcasts. Fearmongering was not how the New Republic liked to play their propaganda.

And small arms locked about him again: mercifully brief, this time, but still yanking his thoughts back to the present. “I _like_ you,” Rey announced, as if anyone could have doubted it. “I’m gonna go find Aunt Leia and tell her I’ve got a new friend!”

She’d barely scampered out the door when Hux gave Kylo an arch look. “Does your mother even know I’m here?”

The swift sideways flick of his dark eyes gave him answer enough. “I told her you were coming.”

“Just now, or earlier?”

Long fingers skittered across the bar without tune nor rhythm. “You don’t trust me very much, do you?”

“Well,” Hux replied, with perfect sensibility, “I scarcely know you.”

Regret flowed through him almost immediately, given the predatory glee that had crossed Kylo’s face. “Which is why you’re here.”

With a low sigh, Hux crossed the room, neatly perched himself upon one of the chairs; though more comfortable than the ornate design in the receiving room, he had no intention of relaxing into its soft curves. “She’s your cousin, you said?” he said, and didn’t hide his doubt. “I don’t recall seeing her name.”

“What, when you looked me up?” Kylo sounded altogether far too amused when he came down, seated himself on the arm of Hux’s own chair. “Have you been _researching_ me?”

The urge to shove at him until he lay sprawled on the floor was as strong as it was childish. Hux kept his hands to himself. “I told you, I came before to say thank you.” Raising an eyebrow, he added, “You told me your name, out on the street. I had to work out who you were in order to get here.”

“Yeah. You told me.” Shifting his weight, Kylo’s eyes took flight, frowned over at one of the picture on the opposite wall: another pastoral scene, this one before water. “She won’t appear in the family records, even though she genuinely is my uncle’s daughter.”

He’d always been a sucker for information. “How does that work?”

“She’s my parents’ ward, and they let her call them aunt and uncle because of that, but they really are. It’s just not talked about.” His hands rose, fell; there, the fingers pressed deep into the thick muscle of his thighs, outlined by the slim lines of his trousers. “The Jedi were traditionally celibate,” he added, sudden, and Hux gave a low snort.

“How very boring that must be.”

“It is.” Those damned dark eyes stared right into him, probing, searching. “I’m assuming _you_ wouldn’t ever be a Jedi.”

“Well, I can assure you my lack of Force sensitivity alone wouldn’t permit it.”

And it had indeed been a mistake to think he could meet those dark eyes. The lopsided smile ended it; Hux glanced away, feeling rather than seeing it fade.

“I’m supposed to take her back, with me.”

“To finish your training?”

Kylo rose, a sudden bundle of sharp energy. “I’m not going.” His eyes fixed upon the lake, oddly pale by reflection. “ _She’s_ a Jedi. I can see it in her.”

“So can I.”

He hadn’t quite intended to say that. He hadn’t even quite intended to _think_ it. And he was left with only regret when he noticed the incline of Kylo’s head towards him, eyes bright with a smile he didn’t bother translating to his lips.

“And you say you’re not Force sensitive.”

Hux smiled, false and fresh. “I wasn’t aware I needed to be.” Already he wondered if it would be rude to ask for a drink from someone he knew to be below the legal age in Coruscant, the old headache returning. And yet the smile twitched into a genuine curve when he thought of Rey herself, added, “Anyone can see she’s special.”

An odd, pinched look surfaced, concentrated about his strange eyes. Despite his height, the not inconsiderable bulk of his body, with his head dipped low and shoulders hunched forward, Kylo appeared to be withdrawing in on himself.

“You don’t know much about the Force, do you?” he asked, abrupt, almost rude. And then, stranger still: “You should come see the school.”

Hux really could have done with that drink. “I would assume it’s hardly a tourist destination.”

“You’d be with me.” Kylo’s smile was a burning plasma edge. “And I saved your life. I’m responsible for you now.” The chuckle then was a cawing sound, a dim memory of dark birds who had haunted the old academy buildings. And Kylo’s eyes were as dark as their plumage when he added, too bright: “Trust me, that would go over well with them. Ben Solo, _finally_ taking some responsibility.”

Hux didn’t bother masking his shudder. “Interesting as the offer is, I somehow doubt I’d ever have the travel clearance.”

Something about those words appeared to suit Kylo’s mood ill; the large mouth was opening on a clear complaint when Rey all but fell into the room. Only by grasping the door frame did she prevent herself from landing flat on her own face.

“Dinner is ready!” she announced, beaming wider than her gamin features ought to have permitted. Then, her face fell with the catastrophic swiftness of black matter detonation. “But Aunt Leia can’t come.”

Already on his feet, slouched forward, Kylo resembled nothing so much as a ragged stormcloud. “Where is she?”

The harsh demand of it barely affected Rey; she only looked perfectly wistful even as Hux tasted ozone upon the thickened air. “Working,” she offered, and then turned a tragic look upon Hux. “As usual.”

Hux was too busy admiring the orphaned urchin look on Rey’s face to know what Kylo actually did. But when the painting, clear across the room, dropped from its moorings and hit the floor hard and flat, both of them started, turned, eyes wide.

And Kylo was looking at the door. “Well,” he said, and his hands softened, though the palms remained hard pressed against his thighs as he turned those dark eyes upon Hux himself. “I suppose you’ll just have to come again.”

“I’ve already said thank you.”

And Kylo frowned. “No, you haven’t.”

But there was little opportunity to rectify any such mistake when her small hand closed about his, the softest manacle his slender wrist had ever known. “Come on, Hux!” she said, already tugging him up from his chair with a frankly alarming strength. “It’ll be delicious!”

Though Hux allowed her to guide him to the table, he did not ask Kylo to walk at his side. He did so all the same.

Somehow, Hux didn’t have the urge to tell him not to.

 

*****

 

He had come prepared. Like a general marshalling his armies, Hux stood before the faint murmurs of the settling room with his battle already planned and won. All he needed to do was follow the timeline to its inevitable conclusion.

As the delegates continued to assume their assigned positions Hux checked a faint yawn. He’d stayed later than intended the night before, helping Kylo entertain Rey. The girl had been oddly distressed by the absence of her aunt, and it had taken nearly four rounds of dejarik – Hux and Rey on one side, Kylo on the other -- until she’d nodded off in the midst of Hux’s greatest victory. He supposed he’d forgive her the lapse of judgement, but it was a close thing.

Hux had taken his leave of them both shortly afterward. From the way Kylo had trailed him to the door with his brow furrowed and the wide lips pursed, it had been clear that Kylo had wanted something else from him; more conversation, perhaps. Or he’d been attempting to delay him until his mother returned. Hux couldn’t be sure which option disturbed him more.

It could only be fortunate, then, that he did not sleep much. It had allowed him to spend a good proportion of the early morning refining his presentation for these guests: a small group of interested parties, willing to be courted to Gillen’s cause. It would have been far more challenging to work on those who had no interest, but that would come, in time.

The low murmur had begun a spiral into silence; tapping a finger upon the holopad to coax it back to full life, Hux cast another glance over the room. Neat rows of faces, carefully arranged in their rows of practised political blandness, lay before him.

Kylo sat at the back of the room, eyes bright, fixed upon Hux alone.

Oddly, he did not appear entirely out of place. There would perhaps always be something faintly feral about him; a peculiarity in the way he held his lanky frame, the odd way his head tilted as if hearing sounds beyond the reach of those without his abilities. Even then, Hux could not be sure it was to be entirely blamed upon his Jedi training. Still, it had no doubt included physical aspects. Had never seen one – likely never would see one – but everyone knew of the Jedi’s weapon of choice. Imagining Kylo with lightsaber in hand was an easy thing: the gleam of its plasma burn would shine bright in his strange eyes. Typically they were blue and green, from what he recalled. But neither colour seemed to suit what little he knew of Ben Solo.

At Kylo’s broad grin, Hux skipped his eyes over him, did not linger. At least he had dressed sensibly enough. It provided a more pleasant view, at least, than the smirk on Chadri Dio’s babyish face from the front row.

“Welcome,” he said, sudden and clear; every set of eyes fixed upon him, and he allowed himself a small and beatific smile. “Senator Gillen has asked that I outline some of the reasons why we seek your support for our bid as the host of the Senate, and why you should in turn offer us that support. I hope to provide you with all the information necessary now, but I do welcome your questions at the end of my presentation.”

The prepared overview had been taken from Chadri’s earlier report. Every inch of it was familiar, conclusions he had already drawn. But seeing them through the eyes of another had a benefit he was pragmatic enough to strip mine for resources; Chadri’s manner of expression had made it far easier to see small flaws, the potential for intrinsic weakness.

Perhaps the man himself had realised the opportunity he’d unintentionally gifted. As Hux moved ever onward Chadri grew stiffer in his chair, small mouth curled in a petulant moue. But he had no room to interject as the interest grew; the moment Hux opened the floor to questions, they flowed like water, generously and easily answered. Any and all concerns followed, and they too were deflected into fresh prospects and new ideas.

And on the outside, at the back of the room, Kylo remained silent. Those dark eyes bored into Hux as he sat sprawled in his chair, legs wide, arms crossed. The one time Hux allowed his gaze to flicker to him, he met the faint smile with a raised eyebrow. He had not expected him to last so long, this impatient child who could not even complete the training inbred to his very bloodline. But Hux could sense no real interest in his work.

Kylo only looked at Hux alone.

Those eyes still lingered upon him when the lights came up, several delegates approaching him to further clarify questions already answered. He could see two other appointees conferring quietly with Gillen while Chadri seethed near her, unacknowledged.

Even as he kept watch from his peripheral vision, almost entirely focused upon the two people before him, Hux noted that Gillen seemed to take pity on Chadri; he puffed up like a Hutt lording over his den as he left the room with a delegate from Kamino. He did have to wonder if Chadri realised how unlikely it would be for any of that lot to ever defer their loyalties from Chancellor Mothma.

The room had emptied by the time his own conversations had completed. His eyes hesitated over the place Kylo had been, as if his apparent abilities had somehow granted him the ability to remain long after he’d gone.

“Hux.”

With smooth grace he turned to her, wearing that practiced perfect smile that never seemed forced when she asked it of him. “Senator Gillen.”

The scent of her was as earth after rain. The ice sheen of her pale hair, the luminosity of her skin, reminded him of the rare sight of sunlight arching through dark cloud. And she smiled in return, her bright eyes knowing where they looked right through him.

“It was very well done.”

“Oratory has always been a favoured pursuit of mine,” he demurred, and Gillen actually rolled her lovely eyes.

“I would not call that simple oratory,” she said, and again she appeared searching where her eyes sought out his own. “You were not reading a prepared speech, Hux.”

“I was working from Chadri’s brief.”

“Were you?”

There was no distinct memory in his mind of when he’d first learned to lie. It seemed a skill he’d come to so naturally he might as well have been born to it. But here, now, before Senator Gillen’s curious gaze, he was undone.

“I know you worry,” she said, very low. And he blinked, hands curling to unseen fists beneath the long sleeves of his coat.

“Senator?”

She had turned from him, attention fixed upon the last of his screens; the data flickered in her eyes like whitecaps upon some distant ocean. “Your situation is a delicate one. But I enjoy having you on my staff.”

This time, the smile had grown strained. “I’m glad to hear it.”

“You are an exceptional talent.” Before him, she was as a shaft of light, wrapped in the shadows of her gown. “I would sponsor you, to return with me to Uyter.”

A strange frisson moved along his spine, an electric charge that burned upon the very edges of his thoughts. “I would appreciate your patronage,” he said, lips oddly numb. “But I do not believe the conditions of my father’s—”

“You are not your father.” The interruption came gentle, but with the strength of the proverbial durasteel fist in a silken glove. He allowed himself to smile in return, for all it did little to mask the bitter truth of his words.

“But I am a Hux.”

“Only on one side.” And she rose, eyes flickering to the door before they returned to him. They might have reminded him of the grey skies of Arkanis, if said skies had ever held even the remotest semblance of beauty. “But I must go, Hux. Let us discuss this another time.”

“Of course.”

Watching her go had all the faint grief of loss. The long lines of her faded into the swirl of her robe as it trailed behind her; black, though only from a distance. Up close, the dark threadwork of elaborate embroidery revealed fractal repeating patterns, endless and repeating and inevitable.

“Brendol.”

He genuinely started, turned. “Lady Bulenwa.”

The dark head inclined in greeting; he’d not had time to speak with her before the meeting had convened, though they’d both acknowledged each other at her entrance. But now her pale eyes flicked sideways, a faint frown at their edges as she looked to the open door. “You seem…rather intrigued by the Lady Senator.”

“Senator Gillen is a person who deserves much admiration.”

Her amusement was a palpable thing. “Yes. I’m quite aware that your tastes are rather more… _refined_ , than those of other young men your age.”

“She reminds me of my mother.”

One eyebrow, limned in silver and dotted with pearly accents, arched high. “Oh?”

“But I am sure there are other things you would wish to speak about.” With an arm crooked, offered, he nodded to the still-open door. “Shall we?”

The whisper of her expensive robes masked their footfall as they made their way down the corridors together. Few they passed batted an eyelid at the tableau they made; she had hosted many a party, and attended still more, in the name of her homeworld. As a staffer for the Senator, Hux had crossed paths with her often, their amiable relationship known as a long standing association between the high society of Uyter and the Senator who represented their interests.

There were whispers, of course. Lady Bulenwa would have been startlingly pretty in her youth: all pale skin and dark hair, a lean and lovely figure. Some of that remained to her now, but then Hux had not been drawn to her fading beauty. And many found it hard to believe she’d care much for his reasonable looks, given the name he bore with them.

“I see that little frightful little Dio child is still on the Senator’s staff,” she noted as they strolled quietly together. With eyes firmly forward, Hux did not miss a step.

“He has his uses.”

The bland words were answered first by a low ripple of laughter. Then she drew closer yet, her own voice a breathy amused thing. “As do we all, no doubt.”

Still he led her through the corridors, though the exit to the courtyards beyond the temple were yet far. “Would you care to take tea with me, Lady Bulenwa?” he asked, as it were but the most natural progression of their journey. “I could tell you more of the Senator’s plans for the hosting of the Senate. Surely your husband would be interested in the contracts; there would be much infrastructure that would need refined or rebuilt.”

“Of course.” Her smile retained the devastating power of her youth. “You have a place we might talk?”

They called for tea in the small meeting room where he had so recently met with Kylo. Like all, it was closed to the outside. No sound would move in, nor out. Not that he believed her to bear any of the odd volatility he’d sensed in Kylo. Even seated before him, here, he had sensed the crawl of _something_ beneath his pale skin. Undefinable, beyond the ken of natural sciences.

But he did not want to think of Kylo, not now: not with this woman seated opposite him with perfect societal decorum, knees together and angled away. The beadwork of her veil cascaded down in fine lines, delicate white pearls scattered over the shine of her dark hair. And yet it was a shine too bright to be natural, now.

Content, Lady Bulenwa sipped at her tea, blue eyes luminous above the fine porcelain; a faint mischievous air lurked there, one that had him looking away, thinking of other eyes. But those as been as dark as the hair above them.

“It has been some time, since we last spoke,” she offered, and he reached for the holopad.

“I have been in communication with your husband.” Already he flicked through a portfolio he kept set aside for meeting such as these, narrowing his eyes at those items which felt most relevant. “He continues to be interested in the possibilities opened to his interests by the hosting of the Senate.”

“But what good would your connections be, if you must remain here?”

Though he did not drop his own gaze from the penetrating curiosity she had turned upon him, Hux swallowed, small and hard, before speaking “I have reason to believe Senator Gillen would ask for my place, amongst her transferring staff.”

“Her influence is great,” she agreed, light, lovely. “But it is not encompassing.” One hand moved over her knee, smooth over the silk. “It is not just influence you need, Brendol. You also require money.”

“Well.” One eyebrow rose, tea damp upon his lips. “That is what my charm is for, I suppose.”

“Yes.” Her own lips closed about the rim of her cup, flushed pink, tender and inviting. “You are a charming little thing, aren’t you?”

She did not need to extend her hand to offer him invitation to draw near. Even as she yet sipped her own, Hux put his tea aside, nearly untouched. In one fluid movement he crossed the floor, went to his knees. And she smiled, as he took both hands and reverentially lifted the voluminous folds of her skirt.

The taste of her pressed familiar against his tongue – an acquired one, perhaps, though he had even now not grown to like it. In the most roundabout of ways it could not help but remind him of the mundane and repetitive rations he had lived upon as a child exiled to the Unknown Regions, amongst the ruins of the fallen Empire. They had been necessary, but still merely something to sustain him. To give him simple nourishment. To bring him through to another day, and to fresh opportunity.

One ringed hand closed tight, in his hair. “Oh, _Bren_!”

Hux closed his eyes, and did what was needful.

 

*****

 

The faintest beginnings of evening stretched languid fingers about the twilight sky, already beginning to strangle light to what darkness the moody city would allow. With his coat heavy about his shoulders, Hux started down the steps to the courtyard below. He crossed but a quarter of it before, skin prickling, he turned back.

Long legs shifted, dark hair blending deep into the shadows about the bench he reclined upon. If he smiled, now, the truth of it had been quite lost to the dark.

“You’re still here,” Hux observed, bland. “Were you waiting for me?”

Kylo leaned forward, just enough for the soft gleam of a lamp to cast a half-mask of light over pale skin. “Well, I haven’t got anything better to do with my time.” Again, Hux could hear that faint petulant tone that reminded him of the years yet between them; his large hands were pale and white-knuckled about a covered cup held between them. “I looked for you, after the meeting. I couldn’t find you.”

His tongue passed quiet over his lower lip, retreated but a moment later. “I had some matters to attend to.” And he smiled, no teeth and with eyes unchanged. “Such are the priorities of one who wishes to maintain their ongoing employment status.”

Kylo’s own smile was a sly and knowing thing. “You’re a very good speaker.”

Compliments had never been his particular weakness. “I should hope so. I certainly devoted enough of my schooling to the task of mastering it,” he said, dry as desert dust. Though his body already inclined towards a return to his previous trajectory, Kylo spoke as though their conversation might never end.

“Do you really think they will convene the next Senate on Uyter?”

He could have walked away. In all truth he should have. Taking a delicate seat at Kylo’s side instead, he only just masked his disgust. Sitting outside had never been a particular preference of his, given that one could hardly assume the cleanliness of such a courtyard, even one within the confines of the capitol buildings. “With Mon Mothma campaigning for Hosnian Prime, it is a frail enough prospect,” he said, and frowned up at the crowning skyline of the city before them both. “But…we can try.”

“She should use you more.” At the odd sidelong look this earned him, Kylo only shrugged. “Senator Gillen. She’ll get what she wants, if she does. I can guarantee it.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

The frown actually made Kylo smile. “Am I not allowed to compliment you?”

“Not when you say it like that.”

“Like how?”

Hux had never enjoyed children. And yet he expected he might have had a less fraught conversation with the man’s small cousin. “Kylo, I’m tired. Is this going anywhere?”

“You could just sit here with me, you know. Relax a little.” One hand rose, tilted the closed cup in his direction. “I still have some caf.”

Hux’s expression congealed at what Kylo obviously thought was an enticing tone. “I’m not sharing your caf.”

“Why not?”

Grasping his hands about the edge of the bench, he tilted his head back, looked to the shrouded sky and the stars just barely visible behind the smog. “And it’s far too late in the day to be drinking caf anyway.”

Half an hour later they were installed together in a dark corner of a small bakery, steaming mugs in hand. Hux had at least chosen tea, though the scent alone of Kylo’s too-strong caf left his muscles tight and on the verge of jitter.

“I really am interested, though,” Kylo said, around a mouthful of some flaking pastry, barely held together with honey and spice; Hux moved his cup backward another half inch, and pursed his lips.

“Spying for your mother, perhaps?” he asked, purposefully light. “I didn’t realise Corellia had any intention of nominating itself as the host.”

Kylo snickered, as if at some private joke. “It doesn’t.” Swirling another sugar-stick into the cup, he added with sudden thoughtfulness, “Well, so far as I know, it doesn’t.”

“I didn’t realise you had any interest in politics.”

“I don’t.” Something of his usual sourness returned to his tone when he added, “But it’s hard to be ignorant of them, when you’re in my position.”

In the old days of the Republic, the Jedi had claimed to be separate – to be those who watched, those who guarded. Everything Hux had been taught instead spoke of those who wished to control without the scrutiny of the galaxy turned upon them. “Can you really read people’s minds?” he asked, sudden. Kylo only snorted into his caf, dark eyes luminous above his mug.

“You don’t really want to know,” he said, but only after he’d lowered it; beneath the table, Hux crossed his legs, tapped the toe of one boot against the table leg.

“And if I do?”

The long, measured stare crawled along his skin; his mouth tasted of ash and dust. And Kylo lowered his eyes, mouth faintly twisted. “Have you ever been to Uyter?”

Hux frowned. “No.”

“Then how do you know it’s the best place to host the senate?”

“I am capable of research.”

“Yes, yes,” he said, with an impatient wave of a long-fingered hand, bare of all jewellery. “But how do you _know_?”

“I’m aware the Force exists, and yet I have nothing to do with it.” The beatific smile was the sort he usually reserved for the moments before he verbally eviscerated someone. “Is that not the same?”

“No.” The irritation that so often flowed about him in constant eddy and current flickered brighter, his brows drawn very low. “Are you going to go there?”

“If it becomes the host?”

“No. While you’re campaigning.” Hunching his shoulders forward, Kylo glared at his caf as if it had made some unspoken assertion about his parentage. “Surely you should.”

No-one had ever read Hux’s mind. In the First Order, only the Supreme Leader had wielded the Force, though there had been rumours of the Knights of Ren, his unholy apprentices. But here, and now, before Kylo, Hux had no idea how to tell if Kylo had done so to him. Especially given the nonsense way he spoke now. “No,” he said, slow, as if addressing a very small child. “No, I shouldn’t go.”

Kylo actually looked insulted, as if a slight against Hux would have some relevance to his own charmed existence. “Why not?”

“You _do_ know who my father is.”

“So?”

“So, the terms of his protection order forbid him from leaving the planet.” He could not help the impatience that entered his tone, for all no one could truly expect _Ben Solo_ of all people to understand the vagrancies and complications of a troubled family life. “I was fourteen when we came here. A dependent child. Therefore the same restrictions he had were also placed upon my person.”

“But you’re not a dependant anymore.”

His nails, short and neat, dragged over the sleek surface of the table before he folded them into his palm. “The restrictions still apply.”

Kylo’s expression had become a rictus of disbelief. “So you can’t leave?”

And his hand rose, those nails short and well-shaped where they caught the light as he cast a hand to the street outside. “Home, sweet home.” The tea burned his lips where he now took an ironic toast, but he drank it deep all the same. And then he placed it back where it had begun. “To give Coruscant its due, at least it does not rain constantly. It never stopped on Arkanis.”

Lips pursed, Kylo had started to swirl yet another sugar-stick into his caf; Hux would have questioned why he’d ordered such a bitter strong beverage, had he not just watched Kylo down half the thing with no such addition. And he stared into what remained of it now as if he could scry from something so mundane.

“I always liked Naboo.”

One finger tapped an absent rhythm on his cup; an old habit, one he’d been prone to indulge in during examinations when his scribed answer turned out not to quite suit the question. “You lived on Naboo?”

“No. No, my grandmother came from Naboo.” Apparently he’d sweetened the caf to his liking; he pulled the half-dissolved stick with an abrupt yank, discarding it on the table. Hux scowled at the insidious creep of the spilled liquid even as Kylo took a noisy sip, then frowned. “We used to holiday there, when I was younger,” he said, and when he looked up, his eyes held an odd light utterly at odds with the dim ambience of the bakery. “I think you’d like it there.”

Pushing a napkin between them, Hux only gave a light snort. “You don’t know me, Kylo.”

“Yes, well, it doesn’t rain very much on Naboo.”

Kylo was ignoring the napkin. Nudging it closer, Hux kept his own skin well clear of the mess. “You’re extrapolating from some very scant data, there.”

“Have you ever seen pictures of Naboo?”

The faint irritation in his voice only made him tired. With a sigh, Hux screwed up the napkin, cleared the mess in three neat quick strokes. “Yes, I would probably like Naboo.” Then, balling the sodden mass in a further layer of tissue, he looked about for a rubbish bin. “Although it’s a moot point either way.”

Kylo reached over, plucked the neat ball from his hand. “What will you do?” he asked, brow furrowed, completely ignoring the way Hux scowled at the way he had discarded the napkins to the far end of the table. And his eyes, so dark, still held that odd sheen when he added, “If you can’t leave Coruscant?”

Leaning back in the chair, Hux folded his arms over his chest, fixed his gaze upon the half-empty teacup. “I have a second in engineering and project management. I suppose I’ll never be permitted to take part in military contracts, but there are civilian developments I might find interesting enough.”

“But that’s not what you want.”

The ache in his chest was old, and small; strangely, it didn’t hurt any less for it. “We don’t always get what we want, Kylo.” And he curled his tongue around the next words, light in their mockery. “But then, you’re young. You’ll learn, one day.”

“Yes,” Kylo said, sour and half-amused, “and you’re such an old man, rich in wisdom and experience.”

Hux only blinked. “I am perhaps older than I should like to be at this stage of my life, yes.”

He shouldn’t have voiced that thought aloud. But from the quiet shadows of Kylo’s eyes, Hux had the uneasy feeling he might have known them had they been kept only in the hollows of his own mind. “Come to dinner with me,” he said, abrupt, the statement of one not often denied his whimsies. Already Hux had turned his attention back to the holopad, the faint tremor of fingers calmed by the familiar pulse of work to be done.

“I have work to do.”

The hand over his held a surprising heat, the fingers long, palm callused and dry. An expletive hovered upon his tongue, evaporated when he looked up, found only Kylo’s dark eyes before him. “No.” The fingers tightened, just a little. “Come with me.”

Hux pulled back, perhaps a little too fast. “Don’t do that.”

“Why?” He leaned forward; Hux leaned back. And he grinned. “Isn’t that what friends do?” But faint irritation underlay the next words, lazy accusation though they were. “You let Rey do it.”

“Are you jealous of your eight year old cousin?”

The clear mockery of the words had Kylo scowling, left only to the most brutal thrust and parry of conversation. “Why don’t you like me?”

Even with the pout turned on him full power, Hux resisted the urge to detail thoughts about spoiled brats and uncontrolled mystical powers. Not only did he suspect Kylo had heard them all a thousand times before to no result, knew what the most immediate effect would be. And while Kylo was undoubtedly grating on his nerves now, not yet ready to risk driving him away on a more permanent basis.

Hux chose his reply with far more care than necessary. But he didn’t mean it to sound so colourless, so thin and delicate. “We barely know each other.” His eyes flickered sideways, to the movement of people on the raised street outside. “We’d never have met, if you hadn’t been forced to save my life.”

“Nobody forced me to do anything.” His hands had bunched to fists upon the table. “I did it because I wanted to.”

The weariness that hit him then was an unfamiliar as it was suffocating. People of Kylo’s odd intensity made so little logical sense. They made him tired. Hux reached for his satchel. “I really should go.”

And yet, even as he rose, Kylo already stood at his side. “Let me take you out.”

They’d garnered enough curious stares when they’d entered, even in this little store. The senator’s son, and the traitor’s get; Hux knew word had already got around about their peculiar meeting. He had no intention of making it worse. “You should be getting home,” he said, instead; when Kylo scowled deeper than even before, he had to wonder if he’d been this much of an entitled horror at seventeen.

“What about you?” he demanded. “Are you going home, or just back to the capitol buildings?”

His fingers tightened on the strap of his satchel. “I told you, I have work to do.”

Again, that odd darkness that crawled across his features like the slide of a lowered visor; the dark eyes blazed, even when there was no light. “Why do you even care?” he asked, harsh and half-hoarse. “You’re not stupid, Hux. You must know it -- that whether you succeed or not, they’re all going to leave you here. Alone.”

His thin smile held an odd kind of peace: a weapon forged long ago, familiar in its swing. “Some of us take _pride_ in our work, Kylo.”

“You can’t live off pride.”

“Why not?” He gave a mocking little bow, stepped around the hulking lankiness of him. “I’ve only been doing it my entire life.”

Tugging the coat tighter around himself, Hux could not be but grateful for the welcome armour it provided against the strange bitterness of the air outside. The change of seasons were rarely felt to any great degree in Coruscant, given the way the sprawling planet-wide city altered its ecosystem to something beyond recognition, but the cold seeped into his bones all the same. And he shuddered at the memory of Arkanis, of rain and mud and endless grey skies.

“Hux, wait.”

He did not slow his step. “No, Kylo.”

“Yes.” Hand on him, pulling him around. With a fierce slap Hux knocked the hand away, eyes wide, lip curled over his teeth.

“Don’t ever touch me again.”

And Kylo, despite withdrawing his hand, did not back away. “You didn’t let me apologise,” he said, face a chiaroscuro of light and shadow, here on the street. And Hux chuckled, the low absence of genuine amusement.

“Well, congratulations. Now you have yet _another_ thing to apologise for.”

The generous lips thinned far beyond what Hux would have thought possible, but Kylo had not allowed again that too-easy escape of his anger. Instead, he’d hunched forward, hair hanging in his eyes. The gleam of the streetlamps highlighted the wild curls, the flicker of the storefront signs like the twist of a spiral galaxy over dark space.

“I’m sorry this happened to you.”

Much as his bunched fist still wished very much to berth itself in the boy’s abdomen, Hux kept it to himself, turned away on a sigh. “It’s not your fault, Kylo.”

“No.” His step faltered – just a little, just enough. “But maybe I can help you.” His voice rose, a siren call from a place beyond the edges of all known starcharts. “Maybe it doesn’t have to be this way.”

“Good _night_ , Kylo.”

Walking away, Hux expected a hand, again – and perhaps not even a physical one. There were enough legends of the Force to tell Hux it would be possible. The space grew between them all the same. But despite that distance between them his last words were still a whisper in Hux’s ear, as if Kylo yet dogged his every step.

“Sleep well then, Hux.”

He spoke dryly, conversational, and did not turn back. He suspected Kylo heard him perfectly well all the same. “Thank you so much for your concern.”

 

*****

 

_A long corridor lies open before the quick march of his boots: sleek and symmetrical, an architectural wonder of perfect trigonomic geometry. Some part of him wants to stop, to press his hands over it, to admire the lines and angles and the rich reflective shine._

_But the body in which he moves, the one that is in this dream: it cares not. No – this is untrue. This person cares, but then he_ knows _. This_ is _his home. That truth is accompanied by an upswelling of vicious pride, but one he knows all too well. It is nothing new. Rather, it is familiar and perfect. Much as is the great starship itself._

_At the terminus of the corridor, the walls open into a great chamber of chrome and black durasteel; from all sides, monitors display an ever-changing kaleidoscope of blue and red and grey, a thousand datastreams compressed before the technicians arrayed across what is surely the bridge._

_The part of Hux which recognises this as a dream draws a breath. As he strides down the central catwalk towards the great viewing ports, the galaxy is laid out before him like a gift waiting to be claimed. Hux has not been offworld since his father had brought them to Coruscant, when he’d been barely fourteen. The pleasure of it now is sharp, painful, a clawed hand about his stuttering heart. Had he been himself he would have swayed with the shock, sent to his knees before the beauty of his true desire._

_But he is not himself. The person whose eyes he stares through is straight-backed, halting in perfect military parade stance at the very centre. His hands move to the small of his back, gloved fingers tucked neatly into the palm of the other. Sharp eyes scan over the space before him, and in his mind Hux draws another pained breath: this is the Star Destroyer he had seen plans for, as a young adolescent. The Resurgent-class._

The Finalizer _._

_He has no idea where the name comes from. It simply_ is _: true and terrible, tart upon the tip of his tongue. But Hux cannot direct the other man’s gaze, cannot turn his head to examine the ship as he so dearly longs to do. He can only stand as an observer, caught behind the other man’s eyes as he stares out upon the expanse of a system Hux can only vaguely recall from the many starcharts he’d studied as a youth. The Unknown Regions, certainly. More than that, he cannot be sure._

_“Where have you been?”_

_Hux startles to see a figure at his side, though the person displays no surprise. How he had known the other had come up on him, Hux cannot tell; he himself had heard nothing, had seen no peripheral movement. And he proves a strange creature when the man turns to face him: clad all in black robes, crowned with a sleek helmet, the visor limned and lined in silver. The eyes cannot be seen behind it, but Hux has the uneasy sensation they are fixed upon him._

_When he speaks, the voice is low, distorted by a modulator. “I have not left the_ Finalizer _. I am called to Takodana, but now? I am here yet.”_

_Hux feels the man’s lips curl into a smile, one verging upon a sneer; it feels similar to a gesture he himself makes often in conversation with those who test his patience. “Your absence was noted,” the man says, and the reply he receives would have been flat even without the vocoder._

_“I had explained to you earlier that it was impossible for me to be there.”_

_“That does not change the fact that you should have been.”_

_In silence, the man’s eyes return to the unfamiliar constellations, the long lines of the ship that arrow off into impossible horizon. The black-clad creature stands too close; their hands nearly brush, though both wear gloves. When he speaks, the strange vocal modulation crackles at such proximity. “Would you like to see it?” There’s amusement there, as mechanical as it is genuine. “As I saw it?”_

_The man stares ever forward. “I saw it the way I should have. Before my armies. Upon my base.”_

_“It was so beautiful, from here.” He chuckles, the sound like fingers over transparisteel. “Five fingers of death, opened. And then: closing like a fist. Choking. Silencing. Ending.”_

_A tremor moves through him; long tendrils of smug pleasure, sparking across his skin. Hux does not know why, but the body in which he stands shifts with an almost post-coital satisfaction, even as his irritation only grows. “You should have been there.”_

_“I am here now.”_

_That said, the creature is turning away, walking away. Even after he is gone, the odd tenseness of the bridge staff remains. The man himself pays it little heed, reading it as unease at yet another argument between their commanding officers. He seems much more content to return his gaze to the stars, counting them as if he expects to find one missing. Long moments pass, and then: a comm message, beeping from his datapad. Hux feels the smirk even though the man does not open it, does not even look down to see who might have sent such a thing._

_Instead he turns, fixing his gaze upon a young man who turns from his own monitor with admirable swiftness, as though he has a preternatural sense of when he is needed. “Lieutenant. There is something I must attend to.” One hand rises, encompasses the bustle of the technicians and officers alike. “The bridge is yours until my return.”_

_He inclines his head, posture perfect and diction impeccable. “Of course, General.”_

_A thrill moves through Hux at the title: one that will never be his own. But the general himself does not care. He knows who he is. It is only what he deserves._

_Again he stalks through the stark beauty of the chrome-silver corridors, the greatcoat about his shoulders fluttering like a cloak behind him. As Hux is pulled along with him it evokes distant memory of Imperial ranks, of the Grand Admirals in their whites. Perhaps that is why the general does it. It would be why_ he _would do it._

_These are familiar corridors to the general, though new to Hux himself. The general scarcely acknowledges those he moves past, his step rapid though even, giving him the illusion of gliding upon the air. They are high in the officers’ quarters when he stops before a quiescent panel. The fingers flicker out a code to coax the doors open. Inside, the coat is flung over a chair, footsteps muted upon the rich carpeting of the floor._

_“Where are you?” he demands, and is met by a low chuckle from another opened door, kitty-corner to the great viewport that stretches across the furthermost wall of the general’s quarters._

_“I’m right where you wanted me.”_

_There’s a faint familiarity to the voice, though with distance and its deep rumble, Hux cannot identify it. For his own part the general only snorts to himself, moving to strip off gloves, cap; only when they are tidied away does he move to another drawer in a low sidetable. From it he withdraws a half-pack of cigarras, a brand Hux does not recognise. Releasing one in a practised flick, the general has it lit within a moment. He stills, draws a deep breath. The relief and the heat of it, rich and warm, are faintly dizzying._

_“What are you doing out there?”_

_When he opens his eyes, they are filled with stars. “Enjoying myself.”_

_That same laughter rises again at that odd distance, throaty and faintly thunderous. “I can enjoy myself in here, just as well.”_

_Another drag, the same hint of easy peace. “I am certain you can.”_

_There comes the sound of a body, shifting; a sharp breath indrawn, released on a long low groan. “But I would like it better. If you were here.”_

_“I am certain you would.”_

_The general smokes the whole thing before Hux even senses any intention to move. The low moans only grow louder, punctuated by faint gasps, the thump of what would likely be a headboard against wall. With a faint snort, the general stubs out what little remains in the delicate opalescent shell he had been using to collect every scrap of flicked ash. Now he undoes his high collar, the belt about the slim waist. Setting the jacket aside leaves him in impeccable shirtsleeves. The high boots are loosened, then toed off before he bends with admirable flexibility to remove the socks beneath. Only when they are all neatly folded does he remove the shirt, too. It leaves him only in singlet and trousers as he at last deigns to enter what Hux can only assume is his own bedroom._

_He cannot be entirely surprised by the view. A man, long and lanky in his pale scarred skin, writhes upon the bed. Facedown, utterly naked, with his ass in the air; one hand has curled behind him, fingers pressed deep within himself. The narrow hips thrust into the disarray of the sheets in irregular rhythm, utterly at odds with his gasping breaths._

_Leaning against the door, the general snorts as if exhaling another lungful of the sweet-scented smoke. “I didn’t say you could make a mess in here.”_

_“Don’t be an ass.” That faint familiarity is again lost in the hoarse rumble of arousal. “You’ve been aching for this since you fired on Hosnian Prime.” And now his voice hitches into a whine, body stiffening on the edge of double-bladed pleasure. “Don’t lie to me. I know it.”_

_“I’ll thank you to stay out of my head, Ren.”_

_“I was only there because you wanted it.” And the fingers delve deeper, his spine arching as he laughs. “Because you wanted_ me _.”_

_A low growl and his trousers are pressed down, sleeveless undershirt cast aside. Already he is hard, and then the general is on his knees, shoving the other man’s head down as fingers fist in the dark hair. His welcoming laughter chokes off on a growl as the general’s fingers slide in, crooking, gliding back out to gather some of the dripping slick there. With the most casual of strokes he coats his own cock, and then the general pushes in._

_The dark-haired man keens, arching underneath him. The sensation leaves Hux himself gasping for air he does not even need: a crucible, pressure and heat and fierce forced change. The general slides within it, the lubricant almost but not quite enough, the pleasure tainted with the faint drag of genuine pain. The grip on his hair loosens, the hand slipping down to grasp bruise-tight on his waist. The body entire is a strong, muscular thing in a manner Hux has not seen in his own partners since his academy days. There will never be much call for physical discipline in the senate._

_It is no novelty to the man who moves within it now: the general knows this body. In fact Hux feels the echo of a kind of fierce possessiveness as he thrusts deeper still. But he does not reach around to take the dripping cock in hand. The other man seems close all the same; his breathing hitches in low pants, broken by disconnected words, murmured, tripping over one another._

_The general himself moves with languid hunger, half-dreaming on every stroke; his arousal is a lazy thing, and its peak comes sudden and hard. He does not pause in his rhythm, driving through the orgasm. The other man follows soon after, fingers fisted in the sheets, his entire body trembling as if set alight and left to burn._

_The general allows but a brief moment for the comedown – then he is rising, moving for the ‘fresher. Inside, he flicks on the shower. Hux notes it is water rather than sonic; quite the luxury, upon a starship. But then, he is the general._

_Another presence passes behind him, slips past even as the general snorts, turning away. “I didn’t invite you to join me.”_

_“Not with words, perhaps.”_

_With a muttered curse the general turns to the sink, glances up. And, inside, Hux freezes. He knows that face._

_It’s_ his _face._

_It’s older, yes. But not by much – a decade, at most. Of course the general – General Brendol Hux II – pays the interloper in his mind no heed, dashing his face with a twinned handful of cold water. And then, he stares. For a moment Hux fears he has been seen. And then, he knows he does not. The general only looks at himself. They are the same eyes, but harder. Colder. He is a man who has done what needed to be done._

_“Hux.” The low plea from the shower has a predatory kind of glee, a hunter tiring of playing at being prey. “Come on.” There is the slick sound of what can only be a hand stroking over a cock. “Before the water gets cold.”_

_The general rolls his eyes, turns back to the shower. And Hux’s heart stops dead even as the general’s beats on. The hand of the man is extended to him, the other, about the thick length as he grins, beckons him closer with dark dark eyes that Hux knows altogether too well._

_The general has been fucking a man with the face of Ben Solo._

 

*****

 

He woke hard and uneasy. The ache of his body came of an exhaustion more psychic than physical, but his cock twitched all the same, heavy and unhappy in his sleep trousers. Hux paid it no heed, staring at the cracked ceiling and seeing instead a system of stars spread out before a First Order destroyer.

_Sleep well, Hux_.

He rolled over, hips digging hard into the too-warm sheets, voice thick and harsh. “Damn you, Kylo.”

And then he did not sleep again at all that night.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all: thank you _so much_ to everyone who read the first part, and then again to everyone who left a comment about it. I was quite overwhelmed by it because I wasn't really expecting much of a response at all, given it's such a strange little AU. And so, I went on to write a little bit more. I'm actually still not sure how far I'll take this, but I got this far -- so I figured it was only fair to share it, seeing as people had read the first part.
> 
> I'm sorry that it's a bit rough around the edges; I have a weird relationship with my writing as it is, but given the way my brain is right now I'm afraid that if I don't post it, I'll just delete it outright. But even my intrusive thoughts can accept that there's at least a couple little interesting moments buried in here somewhere, so I'm going to post it as is and hope for the best. Or something. But yeah, I just find something terribly amusing about Ren and his creepy little crush, so. I do have a fairly decent idea of where this story is going, so: we'll see what happens.
> 
> Either way, thank you for reading this far. <3

It could only have been a mistake to accept such an invitation. But then Hux had never been to this particular restaurant – had never actually expected to find himself there. Such an establishment catered only to those far above his station; he would almost have to make senator to ever gain a place there by his own merits alone.

Kylo was of course himself but a Senator’s son. It still gained him access. Yet he’d been forced to smile blandly at name upon the reservation, spoken so clearly and precisely by the welcoming waiter at the front desk: _Ben Solo, and party_. It had been almost worth it, simply to watch Kylo fight to maintain some sort of decorum in a public setting.

Now, as it wore on towards evening’s end, Hux had to admit it had proven a decent enough meal. While he appreciated fine food from an aesthetic viewpoint, he suspected he’d been raised too long on reconstituted rations to develop any actual refinement of palate. It did also help that Kylo had rejected any suggestion that Hux contribute towards the bill. He might have protested it more, had he not realised that the entrée alone cost more than three days’ worth of the dinners taken in his father’s small apartment.

Only when dessert had been laid upon the table did Kylo finally say something about his mother. At first, Hux did not even realise; overfull from the main course, he’d been poking the sweet soufflé with his smallest fork, eyes fixed upon his dinner companion. The dim lighting, provided only by flickering candles positioned with admirable skill about the grand dining chamber, lent even Kylo’s pale skin a golden sheen, made him almost appear warm. The dark eyes seemed brightened, close to amber in colour as they now narrowed, Kylo’s hand still over his own dessert.

“Hux?”

He blinked, straightened; the fork slid easily into the dessert, allowing it at last to begin to fall. “Yes?”

“My mother.” Tilting his head, the dark hair limned with sudden golden light, he added, “She’s probably going to run as an independent, at the next election. Before the senate moves to wherever it will be hosted next.”

“Well.” With surgical precision, Hux extracted a forkful of soufflé, but still brought it nowhere near his mouth. “That’s interesting information.”

The grin Kylo wore might have been termed unpleasant, if not for the genuine twitch of amusement at its farthest corners. “And not exactly unknown.”

He really hadn’t had enough wine to loosen his tongue – Hux indeed wasn’t sure there _was_ any particular amount that could do it – but still, he spoke the words as if he’d intended them aloud. “I hadn’t heard any such rumour.”

“Put it this way: you’re not exactly going to be surprising many people if you go around repeating it.” Kylo’s own dessert had been demolished in what seemed four or five easy bites; his dark eyes had fixed upon Hux’s plate even as he added, very nearly glib, “I could find something more interesting for you.”

Pushing the dish over, fork laid aside, Hux allowed himself a faint frown. “From your mother?”

With a low snort Kylo set to a small whirlwind of destruction, centred upon the elegant curve of the small dish. “No.”

“Then how?” Rolling his eyes, Hux took up his wine flute, settled himself to small sips until Kylo had finished. Only then did he add, as though the conversation had never paused, “Are you going to use that little mind trick the legends are so fond of?”

With a low snort, Kylo reached for the water pitcher, poured himself another tall glass; though he was too young to drink anyway, Hux suspected he would not have bothered even had he been able to. “Well, I have all those years of training,” he said, and raised the glass in mock toast. “Best make _some_ use of it, right?”

Leaving the salute unreturned, Hux took a deeper swallow of his own dry wine. “You could perhaps explain something to me,” he then said, setting the glass down upon the table with an audible click. “This _mind trick_. I’ve heard tell it only works on the weak of mind.”

Kylo blinked. A second later Hux’s hand jerked, as if a current had passed through it; the wine glass bore the brunt of the blow, falling to the floor and shattering.

And his eyes were dark as his lips narrowed to the point of almost disappearing. “How dare you.”

Kylo wore an innocent look, though one quite marred by the beginnings of a smirk. They both remained completely silent as a server bustled up, set about removing the broken glass; though he gave the woman a brief nod as she finished, Hux did not once look away from Kylo.

Only when she had finished did Kylo lean back in his chair, giving Hux a speculative look. “That only happened because it was a reflexive action, and you were distracted,” he said, before Hux could even think to speak. “If I’d _asked_ you to pick up the glass and throw it at the wall, for instance, I doubt you’d have done it.”

As the server brought him a new one, pouring the last of the bottle into its clean depths, Hux raised an entirely unimpressed eyebrow. “For a lack of ability on your part, or because I’m not weak-minded?”

“A combination of those, and other things.” Though Kylo had reached for his own glass again, he drank no more; instead; he wrapped his hands about it, frowning. “Most people, to some degree, can refuse the will of a Jedi. Their ability to do so is usually reliant on the strength of the Force user, their own sense of self, and an awareness of the Force.” His smile turned lopsided, almost shy. “You’re a very controlled individual, Hux. It makes you less susceptible to suggestion.”

“So I can resist you?”

“Well.” He shrugged, hands still about the glass. “The mind trick is about remaining unacknowledged. For the sake of being covert, usually.” Any traces of the smile had vanished when he said, very quiet, “If I wanted something from your mind, you couldn’t resist me.” And then the smile returned, Kylo leaning back in the chair and leaving the water untouched before him. “But you would know about it. As would everybody within immediate hearing range, too.”

A faint hint of unease crept along his spine. Hux quelled it with a sip of wine, a drop of easy sarcasm. “And they teach you this at _Jedi_ school.”

The dark eyes that met his reminded Hux of the dead space they’d only theorised about in school. “Not exactly.”

In the quiet that followed, Hux ran his finger about the rim of his glass, felt Kylo’s eyes tracking the movement. “But that wasn’t my question,” he said, finally, and Kylo suppressed a low snort.

“I feel like I’m being given an oral examination.” At the unimpressed look this earned him, he added with what Hux supposed Kylo thought was charm, “There are better ways to do that, you know.”

But for all Kylo’s attempt to flirt lacked any real subtlety or polish, it did bring a sudden recollection of the dream: the high flush of the knight’s skin, damp in the too-hot flow of the water from the general’s small shower cubicle. Hux raised an eyebrow, kept his own flush to himself. Even his pale skin could not betray his will.

“This mind trick – you said outright it’s used for covert operations.”

Apparently Kylo had enough sense to realise he would not get far with such poor flirtation. “By its nature, yes,” he said, and grinned. “If it’s being used, the person is probably trying to not attract attention.”

“So how righteous an action is it, really?”

The smile faltered, filtered through sudden unease to become something closer to a frown. “What?”

“I’m only passingly familiar with Jedi lore – I grew up mostly on a Star Destroyer of the old Empire, of course. You remember that, right?”

“You wanted me to forget?”

Hux met the teasing gaze with the cool disdain that came so easily to him, when speaking before those he deemed too ignorant to really understand that of which he was capable. “But I do know that they always proclaimed themselves the peaceful protectors of the galaxy.” His lips curled about the rim of the glass; the wine was darkly bitter, and yet somehow sweet as he said, “How is controlling the minds of those around them in any way _honest_?”

“They didn’t brainwash everybody, Hux.”

“Maybe not directly.” He tapped his fingernails upon the glass, the low sound ringing and pure. “But they didn’t hesitate to manipulate minds around them when it suited their purpose, no matter what the individuals in question might have preferred.”

Kylo passed his tongue over his wide lips, brow furrowed, head tilted as if Hux were some peculiar puzzle he had a mind now to solve. “You’re familiar with propaganda.”

“Yes,” he said, the rising intonation close to irritation.

“Would you like to see some?”

With a snort, Hux then threw back the rest of his wine, set the glass down. “I suspect I see it every day.”

“Exactly,” he replied, and tilted his head further. “But that’s not what I meant.” The smile had turned devious, a child about dark mischief. “I have First Order propaganda.”

Though in truth Kylo had been surprising him right from the very beginning, this was beyond anything he had expected. His abdomen felt cold and hollow, and very tight. “I – what?”

“I collect it.” He smiled, though his humour was the kind of thing Hux would have associated more with children who enjoyed pulling limbs and other appendages off small insects. “Obviously my mother wouldn’t approve. If you tell her I have it, I’ll make sure she knows it came from you.”

He spoke slow, incredulous, and very very cold. “Are you _threatening_ me?”

“Just a little bit.” This time the smile turned wry. “Actually, she probably wouldn’t believe me.” Before Hux could even begin to verbally rip him a new hole in the head, Kylo added, “But my father would. And he’s the one who carries a blaster strapped to his hip.” This time the grin was unrepentantly silly, his dark eyes dancing with mirth. “He’s not the best shot, but he does tend to take the first one.”

Crossing his arms, leaning back in his chair, Hux began to wonder if anyone would _really_ miss the senator’s son. Surely he could strangle him in some dark alley and dispose of the body in the city’s trash compaction system and then just say he’d gone back to school and no-one would be any the wiser.

“Why would I be interested in such…materials, Kylo?”

“Nostalgia?” Long fingers drummed the table, even as he raised an eyebrow in genuine query. “No, but really: you say the Jedi manipulated minds to get their way. That’s true. You’ll notice I’m not actually _at_ Jedi school anymore, so it’s hardly like I’m going to argue their case.” His fingers slowed, stopped. “But they do it with the Force. You, of all people, must realise there are _other_ ways to get people to think exactly the way you want them to.”

His eyes were fixed upon the empty setting before him, the meal long-finished and cleared away. “I don’t want to see it.”

From the way Kylo’s insistence beat against his mind, and the headache forming there, Hux had to wonder if Kylo was actually trying that stupid mind trick on him again. “Are you _sure_?”

His eyes were as cold as the singular word. “Yes.”

“But you miss it.” The insistence made his voice rise, in tone if not volume. Why it mattered so much to him, Hux could not guess, even as he added, “The way it was.”

He drew an exasperated breath, let it go with a sharp sigh. “It was all I _knew_ , Kylo. I was fourteen when I left. Young enough to be still considered a child, but old enough to have had years of their teachings ingrained into my very bones.”

“So you’re still a child of the First Order?”

“I’m an effective orphan, Kylo.” And he smiled, the cool curve of a glacier’s slow path. “So, no.”

In the silence that followed, Kylo almost looked like he regretted asking the question. Hux didn’t believe it. He couldn’t be certain Kylo had ever regretted any stupid thing he’d done, which was probably fortunate. He’d have drowned himself in regret long ago if that was the case.

_And if he’d drowned, you yourself would have died seven days ago._

He spoke sudden, utterly unintended. “He never really intended to bring me here.”

“What?” Kylo’s voice had turned whipcrack sharp. “How do you know that?”

Hux snorted. “He _told_ me. What did you think, I read his mind?”

From the way Kylo stared at him now, it was as if Hux had metamorphosed into a Hutt before him. “Why would he _say_ that?”

His narrow shoulders moved up, down. “We’re honest with each other, at the very least.” Eying the empty glass, Hux frowned, caught the jagged edges of his own reflection there, found them unrecognisable. “He couldn’t leave me there, not knowing what the First Order would do with the son of a traitor.” Then he glanced up, smile small and knowing. “But then, it’s hard to know the real reason why: was it that he knew I would be beaten or tortured to death, or simply that he realised no son of a traitor would ever rise to high rank in the First Order?”

Kylo remained silent and still, eyes upon him. And Hux had to look away.

“He thought the New Republic would give me the benefit of the doubt, perhaps. But then we are not really so different, after all.”

The words were spoken in a flat tone, strange and even. “When you say _we_ , which side are you on?”

Hux glanced up, pursed his lips. “Can’t you read my mind?”

And the mask that had become his expression gave away nothing at all. “No.”

Exhaustion flowed over him then as a wave, crushing and unavoidable. “Kylo, I’ve already explained it to you,” he said, closing his eyes with the sudden weariness. “I was born to a different life, a different _world_. Coruscant isn’t my home. But it’s the only home I have.” Opening both his hands and his eyes, he leaned back in the chair, sighed. “So, I do what I must.”

By comparison, Kylo sat fully upright, something strangely martial in the stiff line of his back. “You could have been something remarkable, under the First Order.”

Hux rolled his eyes, even as his stomach twisted to remember the insignia upon his dream-self’s uniform. “Perhaps.”

“You could have gone as high as general.”

The sharp look Hux threw him then should have drawn blood. But Kylo’s eyes had wandered away. Hux flicked his own in the same direction, saw nothing of particular interest there; he was debating whether or not to call the server over to order some tea when Kylo spoke, sudden and still looking away.

“Are you going to the reception tomorrow night?”

“The one being given by the Ryloth delegation? Yes.” An unexpected possibility crept into his mind, peculiar and almost hopeful. “Are you?”

“Yes.” The clear surprise Hux hadn’t been able to mask earned him a sour look indeed. “My mother insisted. My father’s away again and while she doesn’t usually care overmuch about being unaccompanied, she apparently wants me out of the house more often.”

“Is that what you do all day, then? Sit around the house?” And then he glanced about the room, and then pointedly back at their table. They hadn’t met at the restaurant. Kylo had insisted on collecting him from the capitol buildings. “Well, at least when you’re not stalking me about the capitol.”

The offense on Kylo’s face very nearly made Hux like him. “I entertain Rey!”

“Does she not go to school?” he returned on instinct, but found himself genuinely curious; Kylo, for his own part, looked reluctant to answer.

“She has private tutors.” And before Hux could ask for specifics, he snorted, waved one hand. “You can imagine she gives them the regular runaround.”

“And I’m sure you don’t make that worse at all.”

“I try.” But whatever bothered Kylo about Rey’s manner of education evaporated with a sudden sweetness, his expression softened and strange. “She deserves something good,” he murmured, and again his eyes had wandered away. “She _is_ good.”

In theory, there was no reason at all for Hux to pity this young man. He had two parents who clearly cared for him; he possessed what seemed considerable connection to the Force, and he had both wealth and education to his name. There was no reason at all for Brendol Hux Jr. to consider spending any of his own limited stores of pity upon such an unworthy recipient.

And yet, he did it anyway. “You’re young, Kylo,” he said, very tired. “You still have choices.”

Kylo glanced back to him, snorted. “And you’re so old.”

Irritation prickled at the words now. “My choices are somewhat less than yours.”

“Maybe.” And, before Hux could actually think to lose either patience or temper, he asked: “If you could be anything – be any _where_ – what would you choose?”

Hux blinked. Just once. “I’d choose to think about it.”

“Somehow I’m not surprised.” And Kylo smiled, low and uncertain. “But…just don’t think about it too long.”

As he raised his hand to call for the bill, those dark eyes fixed upon him, flickering gold and crimson alike in the low light. Hux turned away. Sometimes it was best to think of nothing at all.

 

*****

 

Gillen moved amongst the other guests as a clear river in full flow, lovely and endless and shimmering in the golden light. Dressed in her preferred black, the slim gown lay mostly hidden by the long folds of the cloak that fell in long straight lines from its high collar about her throat. But the severity of it had been broken by the rick scattering of golden stars across both gown and cloak. All glittered as she moved, transforming her into a galaxy unto herself, self-contained and breathtaking in its brilliance.

Hux found it hard to take his eyes from her. From the very beginning he been pulled towards her orbit, but in this he was left dizzied and dreaming, unable to approach. Astronomy had always been one of his favoured subjects, though in practice he had little use for it these days. That did not dull the need in him: to take down a star from the sky, to hold it between his hands and before his heart. To know it intimately: heat and light and the transformative power of that which had created the galaxy around them all.

She was far beyond his reach. That did not stop him from wanting what she had.

But he could not stay by her side, much as he might have wished to. Instead he moved to mingle with the other guests, pleased to be able to neatly sidestep Chadri at every turn. He still had more work to do regarding the way he’d hijacked Hux’s own research, but he’d come to the conclusion that a direct approach held little merit. Given Hux had still ended up with much of the current correspondence regarding the research Chadri had stolen, pushing the point would yield little by the way of useful result. Hux’s ends would be far better served by seeking another way to take the other man down. Hux had patience enough to wait. And training enough to manufacture some quicker scenario should he change his mind.

A rippling through the crowd, a burst of electric charge upon the air, had Hux raising his head: a hunter sensing his prey upon a changing wind. Low whispers darted about him, but Hux knew long before he saw her.

Leia Organa, also dressed in black. Both the colour and the long lines of the dress seemed almost harsh against her pale skin; it fell in long straight lines, sleeveless, but with the shoulders fixed by small golden brooches. But when she turned, even Hux couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow. The back hung low, the many folds of fabric gathered like a hood with its lowest arc reaching to the small of her back. A criss-cross of golden chains glittering in the void left behind, lovely in their intricate design.

“Please don’t stare at my mother like that.”

Turning, hand too tight about his wine goblet, Hux found Kylo standing at his elbow. And he blinked, said nothing. While never quite the ruffian, it was still startling to see him like this: hair ordered and clothing flashier than any he’d seen him in before. Tonight he wore a heavy brocaded coat that went to his knees, over dark and slim-cut trousers. But it was the colour that startled: rich crimson, glittering with intricate and asymmetrical silver beadwork that wrapped about him like a constellation. Brow furrowed, Hux could not help but reach out, running his finger over one long line that wended down from his right shoulder.

Kylo did not step back. “You like what I am wearing?”

But even the clear amusement could not distract Hux from his work; though he’d since withdrawn his hand, he still examined the beading with narrowed eyes. “It’s a star system,” he said, at last; the words felt cold upon a thickened tongue. “The Hosnian star system, in fact.”

“Very good.” Though he did not look up, Hux could still hear the grin in Kylo’s light words. “I didn’t think senator staffers knew their celestial geography so well.”

Hux kept his eyes upon the constellations wrought into Kylo’s coat. These particular stars could be seen from many places, of course. But in this precise arrangement: it was the view from Hosnian Prime. His throat worked, hard and half-paralysed by the memory of the bridge. The man at his side then had been dressed all in black. And, of course, he had won the mask. Silver and cold and so very strange.

But he had still been Ben Solo. Just like this boy beside him now.

At last Hux straightened, smile thin and stretched. “Is this a veiled support for Chancellor Mothma, then?”

Kylo stifled something between a snort and a chuckle. “You’re assuming that anyone here would know what the design is.”

“I knew.”

“Yes, but you’re _you_.” And before Hux could think whether to take the words as compliment or insult, Kylo shrugged; his hair, shining in the bright light of the ballroom, shifted about his pale features. “I don’t know, actually. I just wanted to.”

“You just… _wanted_ to.” Without quite intending too, Hux fixed his eyes again upon the coat, noting the careful placement of every bead – and that each bead appeared to be some precious stone, carefully worked to appropriate size and shine. “You keep things like this just lying around.”

“Careful, Hux.” And at the glare this earned him, Kylo smiled wider. “You’re sounding jealous.”

“Of _what_?”

“Of the stupid things stupid kids with stupidly wealthy aristocratic parents can do on a stupid whim.”

His hand was curled far too tightly about the stem of his glass – at least, if he didn’t want to spend the next half hour picking shards of glass out of his fingers. “Good night, Kylo.”

“No, wait.” Hux stiffened as Kylo caught him by the elbow, not that it appeared to deter him; Kylo even yanked him a step back, forcing him to turn as he did so. “You haven’t met my mother yet,” he pointed out, and Hux resisted the urge to throw the remnants of his drink in Kylo’s face.

“Who says I want to meet your mother?” he asked instead, icy as his eyes, and Kylo rolled his own.

“You want to meet my mother.” At the narrowed glare this garnered, he flicked his hand back through his hair, and strangely it did not disturb its artful fall at all. Hux could have hated him for that alone. “And no, I’m not trying to mind trick you. I don’t even need to read your mind to know you want to.” When Hux answered only by mimicking a bronze statue, Kylo very nearly stomped one over-large foot. “Hux. Come _on_.”

He had apparently remained silent for a moment too long, for Kylo did not give up. Instead he scowled, again pushing his hand through the riot of his dark hair.

“Does this feel too easy, or something?” he demanded, lips curled to a fierce pout. “Because you almost _died_ , Hux. There’s nothing easy about this.”

It would have been the work of a single second to simply turn and walk away. And yet, he did not. Something held him there – kept him at Kylo’s side when the young man threaded one arm through his own, tugging him across the ballroom. Around them the air grew warm, thrumming with some hidden energy that Hux’s logical mind could not justify. He was no believer in destiny, or even the true influence of the Force on those who chose to have nothing to do with it. Hux was still perfectly aware of what it meant to stand upon the precipice of such a choice.

He had known her first from propaganda: young and lovely and brilliant. Leia Organa had grown older now, and harder. Standing before her now, she remained just as brilliant as her youthful rebel self. And when she turned, called by her Kylo’s voice, the dark eyes fixed upon him with clear and dangerous curiosity – the same eyes her son had inherited.

But even that did not strike him the hardest. Of course Hux had been introduced to Kylo through the Force; it had hummed through him then, on full display as Kylo had wielded it to save Hux’s life. But though Leia Organa did not use it in the same way, it still struck him like a blow; he might have staggered, had it not still been pressed too close to Kylo’s side. And had he not believed in it before, simply being in her presence would have undone every erroneous belief the First Order had indoctrinated him with since early childhood.

_The Force is strong in her._

Kylo’s smile managed to be both forced and entirely genuine at the same time. Looking at him hurt. “Mother, this is Brendol Hux Jr.”

But it felt even harder to again meet Organa’s dark eyes. “Hello,” she said, perfectly courteous though she extended no hand. “You work with Senator Gillen, correct?”

With a low bow of his head, he pulled his arm free of Kylo’s grip, crossed it over his abdomen as he gave a brief bow. “I do, yes.” Glancing up, he moved his lips in the charming curve he reserved for such social niceties. “It’s very good to meet you.”

Organa appeared entirely unmoved by the gesture. “Well, Ben has been insisting on it,” she noted, and gave her son an arch look. “I do apologise for not being at dinner the other night, but given the short notice, it become somewhat impossible.”

“I’m assuming Kylo told you about it perhaps a minute before I arrived?”

For the first time, he sensed some genuine emotion from her; a light smile, even, almost gracing her lips. Then, it faded back to something darker, more watchful. “You call him Kylo?”

“That’s his name.”

Her eyes flickered, hard and questioning, between them. Then they focused upon him alone, her lovely face marred by the frown she chose. Some part of him wanted to bow his head, to step back, to beg her forgiveness for some slight he did not even understand. But Hux remained before her, motionless and watchful, and Organa only shook her head.

“I’d like to speak with you more, though I haven’t the time just now.” And now she glanced to her son, one eyebrow arched in pointed question. “Perhaps Ben could invite you back to the house – though with a little more warning this time, perhaps?”

Kylo appeared to be sulking. Hux could only smile wider, voice even and lovely. “I would be pleased to come at a time convenient to you, Senator.”

And she looked back to him now, her lovely face expressionless. “I will see what can be arranged.” Though as some thought flitted across the forefront of her mind, her brow creased in sudden consideration. “Rey will be glad to see you. I hear more about you from her than Ben, actually.”

Hux could only blink. “Oh?”

“Yes.” And despite the great height difference between them, Organa leaned forward, seemed almost to loom before him as she added, “She tells me quite often about how you belong to us now.”

Hux did not step back, even as something in him wished very much to do so. “I believe she puts great stock in the proverb that when you save someone’s life, you become responsible for it.”

“Indeed.” One hand reached forward, fingertips tracing over the fabric of his coat; too startled to move, it ended only when she withdrew her small hand. “She’s very interested in you,” she added, thoughtful. “With your red hair and dressed all in white.”

“White?” He glanced to Kylo, found him staring at his mother like Organa had grown another head. “I…don’t wear white.”

She blinked. “You don’t?”

“No.”

“How peculiar.” And then, she smiled: and how lovely she was when she did. A bright and burning thing, ready to cut down all that would challenge her grace and strength. “But yes. Do come around, again – and, if you’ll excuse me?”

For a long moment he remained silent, staring after her long after the parted crowd had closed after her departed form. “Well,” he said, at last, voice strange and strained. “That was…peculiar.”

“What?”

Hux went to reply, and then blinked. Apparently Kylo had located a drink from somewhere, though as far as he could recall Kylo hadn’t once left his side during the entire conversation with his mother. Eyeing the glass with some distaste – a fruity, rainbow thing with a twisted straw sticking out at a rakish angle – Hux said, “So, your cousin talks about me a lot?”

Kylo blinked. “Rey talks a lot in general.”

“Well.” Raising both hands, Hux adjusted his collar, slid them down his front to smooth out non-existent creases. “I should go do some work.”

“Why?” Long fingers shifted about the glass, leaving wet trails in the condensation. “You could just stay with me.”

Hux had already shifted his attention to the turn of the room about him, calculating path and trajectory. “I didn’t come to see you.”

“So?” And, before he could move, “Do you know how to dance?”

Hux glanced back, one side of his face curled in disdain. “What?”

“They’re going to have dancing. They always do.” Fixing his lips about the straw, Kylo sipped at his drink, dark eyes on him. Then he swallowed, and scoffed with it. “Surely they taught you how to dance as part of your officer training. Although even if they didn’t, I’m sure you would have learned before coming to Senator Gillen’s staff.” Somehow he’d sidled close again, head tilted as he said, soft, “You’re always prepared. For every eventuality.”

Taking a step sideways, Hux shook his head. “This isn’t dance music.”

“I could ask them to start some.”

Waving a hand, Hux stepped neatly away from Kylo’s looming presence. “Perhaps later.”

“I won’t wait forever.”

“ _Kylo_.”

But then, Kylo had never struck him as the type to be dissuaded by mere verbal warning. The fact he was now drinking through the straw while simply _staring_ at him over the rim of the glass proved as much. Hux was contemplating how scandalous it would be, to first slap the drink out of his hands, then the smirk off his face, when a throat cleared just to his left.

And then, he wondered if he could also get away with punching somebody in the throat too, just to round out the trifecta. “Hux,” Chadri Dio said with false societal cheer, “You have to introduce me to your new friend!”

Kylo snorted into his drink, let the straw fall from his generous lips. “He doesn’t _have_ to do anything.” His smile was a bladed thing, sharp and pulsing. “And I can introduce myself.”

“Ben Solo, isn’t it?”

“And you’re Chadri Dio.”

His own smile, toothy and perfect, did not quite hide his genuine pleasure. “You know my name.”

“No, I read your mind.” Somewhere between bored and apologetic now, Kylo shrugged his shoulders, took another long and noisy sip. “It didn’t take very long.”

Chadri’s smile faltered only a little. “I see.” And now he frowned, tilting his head in the supercilious concern of a career politician. “I heard you’d… _left_ , your training. It’s good to see you still succeeded in learning something there.”

“Yes, indeed.” Stirring the remnants of the drink with its ridiculous straw, Kylo actually _beamed_ at Chadri. “It was really only _control_ and _restraint_ that I failed at.” And he leaned close, conspiratorial and cheerful. “Both are very important ideals. To the Jedi.”

Even as Kylo set about downing the last of his drink in two easy swallows, Chadri had the sense to take two steps backward. But, Hux was sourly amused to note, he certainly didn’t have the sense to back away entirely. “It is interesting to see you here,” he tried, again. “Do the Jedi hope to again become an important influence within the central government?”

“How should I know?” Kylo blinked those dark eyes, opened wide and very dark even in the bright lights of the ballroom. “I’m only here as my mother’s date.”

“Oh, not Hux’s, then?”

Kylo rolled his eyes. “He’s here to work.” As he indicated the crowd with one large and encompassing and hand, he smiled again: that strange and brilliant thing that rendered his mismatched features very nearly terrifying. “So, which one is _your_ date?”

Chadri’s flat smile barely quirked the corners of his own lips. “I have work of my own to do.”

And Kylo’s hand landed hard on his shoulder, an almost audible slap. “You should probably go find something to do, then,” he said, and gave a mock sigh. “Senator Organa’s office already has a liaison to communicate with Senator Gillen, you see.”

“Of course.” The bow of his head was a stiff and sour thing. “Good night then, Mr. Solo.”

And he shrugged. “Staffer Dio.”

Hux, having since snagged a welcome glass of wine from a passing server, frowned; Kylo, for all he’d looked to be dismissing the staffer, now stared after him with all the fierce concentration of a hunter having scented its prey. As Hux watched he seemed almost to vibrate, nostrils flaring, hands clenched to fists.

“I could tell you _so many_ things about him,” he whispered, harsh and almost ugly. Hux’s own reply came flat, disinterested.

“Keep them to yourself.”

And he turned, incredulous and wide-eyed. “What?”

Taking a sip of his wine, Hux glanced down to the chrono on his wrist, and frowned. “I don’t want to know.”

“Hux.” The fierceness of it had him glancing upward again; Kylo had crowded close, his breath scented with the odd floral notes of his ridiculous beverage. “You could ruin him within the _day_ if I told you even a quarter of it.”

Taking a delicate step backwards, Hux took a deeper sip of his own wine. “I don’t care.” And he nodded in the direction Chadri had retreated in, voice hard. “Either I do it myself, or I don’t do it at all.”

So quickly his tone turned wheedling. “Let me help you.”

“You’re not helping me. You’re offering me a solution on a golden platter.” Finishing his drink, he set the glass upon a passing platter, and turned to look again over the people arrayed before him. “I work for my meals, Kylo.”

He didn’t need to look back to know Kylo was scowling. “You think what I do is easy?”

“I think what you do works for _you_.” He gave him a nearly pitying stare, and then shook his head. “We’re very different people.”

At first, Kylo glared at him so hard Hux actually began to wonder if he’d been taught to set things aflame with merely the power of his mind – and _that_ was a genuinely sobering thought. And then he turned, stomping away through the nearest crowd. Startled patrons glared after him, and then to Hux. He could only off a shrug, the unspoken mantra of _what do you expect of children?_ before abandoning the entire incident as a lost cause.

As he continued to move through the flow of people, from one group to the next, he kept one eye out for her. It was but inevitable, that they should meet. And then, there she was: Lady Bulenwa, stunning in deep green. Though Hux had never cared much for the fashion of women, even he could see it was a striking gown, gathered in many folds; three twisted ropes made up the bodice, strung between her choker and the glittering belt that emphasised how narrow her waist remained. With dark hair piled atop her head, revealing a neck long and graceful, he felt a twist in his abdomen that he hadn’t known since the earliest days of their acquaintance.

“Hux, my dear.” She came to him with a smile upon her lips, collecting his hands in her own. “You do look lovely this evening.”

And he turned her hands in his own, raised them to his lips for a brief kiss. “I believe that is my line.”

“Yes, but I spent several hours making sure people would say as much of me. I hardly think that was your own concern.” And yes, she was a lovely thing indeed: all dark hair and pale skin, long and lean in the golden light. “Shall we dance, then?”

Lady Bulenwa always proved a most competent partner; though Hux had never held much patience with dance, he had mastered the skill as necessary years beforehand. She made it almost worthwhile, her grace easy as they began a quick-footed step about the rich mosaic of the tiled floor.

But of course, it could not last. Scarcely had the last notes of the song finished when a figure appeared at his elbow, hulking in crimson and black. Even as Lady Bulenwa smiled up at him, one hand rising to flutter at her throat as she giggled, Kylo took him by the elbow.

“Excuse me,” he told her, without apology. “I’m taking this dance.”

And as the next song moved into swing, Hux found himself halfway across the room with Kylo’s hands at waist and shoulder, his feet knowing the way even as his thoughts consisted of little more than the singular desire to kick the other man in the shins.

“Kylo, what are you _doing_?”

His face, pinched and pale, was still inclined across the room; Hux didn’t need to look to know Lady Bulenwa was likely still watching them both. “I don’t like her.”

They moved well together, Hux could see; though Kylo had moved them across the room, in truth neither one of them actually led the dance. “I don’t care,” Hux said, keeping effortless time. “You can’t just—”

“You don’t know what she’s _thinking_ about you.” Finally Kylo looked at him; Hux almost wished he hadn’t, seeing him wild-eyed and feral. “You don’t know what you’re _doing_. In her _head_.”

“I’m right here in front of you, idiot.”

“Not in there you’re not.” Even as the dance continued Kylo closed his eyes. The pained expression almost made him appealing; some tragic hero agonising over a choice that could turn him from his valiant destiny if made incorrectly. And as Hux continued to stare at him, Kylo sighed. “It’s not _right_.”

Though he’d had but few drinks this evening, Hux could have murdered a bottle of brandy in that moment. It did not help that Kylo’s arms tightened about him then: strong, and surprisingly warm. He’d rarely admitted it to previous male partners, but he had always rather enjoyed being held down. Had always been secretly rather aroused by the thought of no escape.

“Kylo,” he said, and swallowed around the rough edges of his voice. “Kylo, you’re the son of a Senator and spent likely half your childhood at a school of celibate mystics. I’m not asking you to understand what my life is like.”

Kylo had at least opened his eyes again, but was still staring across Hux’s shoulder, and across the room entire. “This isn’t you.”

“Why not?” Hux executed a sudden, swift turn. “I do what is necessary.”

With his sightline to Lady Bulenwa now cleanly cut, Kylo had nowhere to look but to Hux himself. But despite the fierce set of those eyes, beneath them lay a sheen of strange misery. “You sleep with her,” he said, abrupt, almost childish. “She’s _married_.”

He sighed, the hand on Kylo’s brocaded shoulder tightening almost to bruising. “It’s an arrangement, Kylo. One of mutual convenience.” He moved closer, dipping his head, forcing Kylo to do much the same so he could hear the low words. “Her husband is mostly impotent, and hardly attractive to her besides. He’s also very wealthy, and owns many mines and fabrication facilities on Uyter. She comes to Coruscant to socialise and to direct business to him.”

Kylo’s head shot up, eyes wide. “And that’s what you are? _Business_?”

“Her money is useful.” Again, Hux yanked him around when it seemed he would return to glaring at the lady. “I help direct her to where it best might be spent.”

And there was something ugly indeed in Kylo’s gaze when he fixed it upon Hux’s face now. “There’s a word for people who do that.”

Fury blossomed low in his gut, perfect in its white-hot intensity. Had Hux been a creature of instinct and indulgence, he’d have drawn the long knife from his boot and thrust it up through Kylo’s groin. “I’d advise you not to speak said word aloud.” And he drew close again; they’d have appeared conspirators, to anyone thinking to watch. “You might be a Jedi, but I daresay even you prefer to keep a tongue in your head.”

Kylo jerked his head back. “I’m _not_ a Jedi!” he snapped, and with a scowl his own fingers dug too deep into the firm skin of a narrow waist. “I mean it, Hux. Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

Even through the weighted fabric of his coat, Hux could feel the press of blunt nails. “Stop… _selling_ yourself.” And Kylo could not meet his eyes now, looking away over his shoulder with blind frustration. “Whatever she’s paying you, it’s not enough.”

And Hux could only sigh. At least the song was drawing to an end. “It’s not that kind of transaction,” he said, this time with the weariness of an adult explaining complex concepts to a toddler. “We both take pleasure enough from it.”

“Liar.”

And Hux flinched back. “Don’t you _dare_.”

Again Kylo had fallen to scowling, though the hand he’d raised from Hux’s shoulder did not move any closer. Instead it remained several inches from one temple, fingers flexing, as if that motion alone could withdraw Hux’s thoughts from his mind.

“But you don’t _enjoy_ her,” he said, mutinous.

“It’s none of your business whether I do or not.” With a sharp snort Hux pushed the hand down upon his shoulder once more, returned his own to Kylo’s. “And you’ll never know, besides.”

And indeed, the song was drawing to its end; by the approach of several other guests, Hux could see that they would both be soon with new partners. As if sensing the same – probably sensing it _better_ – Kylo drew close, lips too close to his ear. “Hux,” he whispered, nearly frantic. “You don’t know what I can _see_.”

He drew back. “Perhaps I don’t _want_ to know.”

But then, Kylo did not take no for an answer. Hux only had a moment to sourly blame it upon overindulgent and careless parents before he added, “It’s not just her. It’s that man – Dio. His mind is a _mess_ , you shouldn’t—”

“Kylo.” Hux stopped dead, even though the music played on. “I can look after myself.”

But Kylo had not yet let him go. “You deserve better.”

“I’m the son of a traitor,” he said with perfect easy bitterness, extracting himself from Kylo’s grip. And the other man frowned, shook his head.

“But you’re not the traitor.”

“Sometimes I wonder.” Dusting at his shoulder, Hux turned away, already scanning the crowd for his next mark. “Now leave me be. I have work to do.”

“You work too much.”

“And you, not enough.” He could not help but glance back, one eyebrow quirked high. “What a pair we make.”

“No.” Kylo’s expression had turned dark, thoughtful. “No, we’re not a pair.” And then, he took one step forward. “But we could be.”

Hux took another step back. Even as he turned away, he saw it, strong and true: the memory of a body held under his own: muscular, sweat-sheened, trembling with the faintest hint of laughter.

_Dreams are never anything more than that_.

But now, he looked only forward – and then moved in the same direction.

 

*****

 

_It feels familiar, to be back in this skin – but then, it_ is _his own skin. Just older. And – in a different time. A different place. This man is a general. Hux is himself no more than a minor staffer for a minor Senator. When the general had been Hux’s own age, surely he had been far more certain in his career prospects and how to make the most of them._

_From the general Hux can now feel a sense of vague amusement. Adjusting his gloves as he moves through the corridors, the general takes them deep into a quieter part of the great ship – far from the bridge. Hux is very familiar with the design of previous star destroyers, of course, but this is one that has stripped away the weaknesses of the Imperial-era starships, has turned them into something new and vibrant for the First Order. Hux feels as though he knows this ship just an intimately as any other. Perhaps because the man whose eyes he looks out of knows. But then, Hux does not know where the man is going – and by his purposeful step, the general very much has a destination in mind._

_The corridor widens, heightens; storage bays march along each side in orderly formation, though by the quiet these are not much in current use. The general’s footsteps, alone in this place, echo with the repeating staccato of a military tattoo. He stops before one bay; Hux notes nothing to indicate it is different from any other._

_While the great cargo doors remain hydraulically and electronically sealed, the general moves to the smaller personnel access door. A code is entered, accepted; as he slips inside, Hux notes that the interior has been lit already by a low gleam from naked bulbs scattered about near the high ceiling._

_The general pays his surroundings little attention, remaining by the now-closed and resealed door. Bending forward from the waist he takes off his boots, sets them neatly to one side with the socks tucked neatly into their toes. He then pads across the unexpectedly soft floor; Hux cannot see much of it in such low light, but he guesses it has been made over into a salle, of a kind._

_It is of course nothing like those the officers would use to train. This is a room repurposed – an empty warehouse, with unfinished walls and catwalks stretching from one high vantage point to another; all around remain the empty bays where cranes and other heavy machinery would be attached, if needed. This is no neat room designed for purpose; this is something borrowed, changed, remade into what its master has demanded of it._

_At the far side of the room, Hux sees for the first time its single occupant: in constant motion, darting and dodging in the dim light, he should be almost anonymous. But even had Hux not known it through the general, he’d have recognised him all the same: Ren, stripped to the waist, barefoot and bare of face. A whirling dervish of fierce concentrated energy, his saber a brilliant blaze before him as he moves through his training._

_Hux has never seen Kylo with his weapon in hand. It still quite steals all his breath to see it even in the hands of this form: older, skin scarred, hard body won through rigorous training and actual combat experience both. Fortunately the general is just as enthralled. Through his fixed gaze can Hux can watch Ren in all his considerable glory; the stretch of his muscles, sheened with sweat; the play of shadow over curve and line as he reaches and spins in the fashion of calligraphy writing itself upon the very fabric of the galaxy._

_In this, the saber seems but an extension of that glorious body – and, in the way Ren’s body is a strange and beautiful thing, the saber is the same. Kylo is a gangling collection of too-long limbs, his face a jumble of features that might have been striking alone, but are made too overwhelming when placed together. With another decade to his name, Ren has made something of himself: the body has broadened, his shoulders tapering to a lean waist and hips, his legs the long coiled power of a stalking predator. He is beautiful this way, for all he should not be so._

_And the saber is the same. Hux has never seen its like: a long blade of unstable plasma, the brilliant spitting crimson of a wound bubbling arterial blood. But even the clear instability of the blade is not its strangest feature. At the head of the hilt, just below the discharge vent of the blade, are two further vents; from them spills twinned shortened plasma discharges, forming a brilliant crossguard. It is dangerous and ridiculous and perhaps necessary but if only it had been made properly in the first place—_

_But Ren is its master. It is a part of him as he moves through his motions. Hux does not know the forms by name, but he can sense the shift between them; one to the next, to another, back again as he adapts his style to the imagined attack of the moment. Ren is no blunt weapon to be thrown against any opponent. He knows offense, understands defence. There is style and substance beneath all of it. He’s hardly a perfect weapon, of course; even Hux, unexperienced in such as he is, knows that Ren will have a weakness, somewhere. Unlike Starkiller, Ren has not been built from the ground up, has not been manufactured and refined to be impenetrable._

_But he is still a very effective weapon. And if Ren had been but a perfect mindless droid, then the general would not be able to take what he wants most. And Hux, upon the edges of the man’s mind, knows exactly what the general wants from his knight._

_And the saber flies from his hand, arcs across the room, a projectile thrown by one outstretched arm. The general does not move even as it shudders to a halt just before his face._

_There it hangs, impossible and brilliant upon the air, as Ren raises his voice in easy mocking greeting. “Did no-one ever tell you it’s rude to stare?”_

_“You were putting on such a show.” The general smiles, light as glacial ice, even before the plasma burn of the unstable weapon. “I thought you might appreciate an audience.”_

_Striding close, Ren’s trousers ride dangerously low on the sharp edges of his hips. If they’d been his own eyes, Hux might have averted them; Kylo is so much younger than he is. It does not feel right to linger over the fine lines of that body when his mind cannot help but slip to the fierce memories of the previous dream. But then, before him now stands the man that the general calls Ren. And yes, he is older indeed: broader across the shoulders, leaner in his hips, hair a longer tumble around his thicker neck._

_It is Ben Solo. Hux does not doubt that; no doppelganger could bear such a resemblance to the person Hux knows in his own reality. But neither can he deny the coldness in his stance, the vague madness that burns as a low presence in his dark eyes. Hux has only taken the vaguest sense of it from Kylo._

_But Ren seems_ made _of it. And now Ren stands just to the right of the general’s sightline, wide lips curled. The thick arms have folded across the broad chest, the biceps of both bulging, sheened with sweat. Hux cannot help but wonder how they might taste even as Ren rakes a knowing gaze up and down the motionless body of his general._

_“Perfect,” he says, sudden, very low. “As usual.”_

_And the general only snorts, does not move; the heat of the blade is close, as if he moves too close to the surface of a star. “I am a general in the First Order.” His own smile is a low and self-satisfied thing. “I do have standards to maintain.”_

_“Not with me.” His head tilts; the loose curls, longer than Kylo’s and dampened with the sweat of his skin, move whisper-soft over the naked skin of his shoulders. “Shall we play a game?”_

_Though Hux trembles at the throaty promise of the words, the general speaks as if bored. “Only if you’re prepared to lose.” And now he frowns at the saber, still suspended but a moment from his face, held there only by the whim of a madman. “I’m not in the mood to watch you take out your temper on my ship. We have quite enough issues with the accountancy department regarding your excessive expenditure as it is.”_

_And Ren smiles, steps closer, angling himself around and away. “Oh, no. No, I don’t need to take out my frustrations on your equipment.” And there, at the general’s side, he leans in close, damp lips against one ear. “Not when I have you, here. All to myself. As it were.”_

_Even the stoic general cannot repress this shiver. Still he keeps his eyes fixed on the saber blade. Brilliant and red, and so very like the test firing simulations of Starkiller – or so Hux gleans, from the surface thoughts of the general’s mind. Starkiller is the name of the weapon they had discussed in the previous dream. This, then, comes before._

But it’s just a dream _, he tells himself, uneasy._ Timelines don’t matter in a dream _._

_And then, truly, nothing should matter save for the way Ren choses to step around him. One hand trails over his shoulderblades; the muscles of his back ripple beneath the heat of it, for all there is yet fabric between fingertip and skin._

_No words pass between the two now. It does not mean they fall to silence; Hux can feel something, but he is not part of it. The general and the knight speak, perhaps, mind to mind. Though Hux is perfectly aware Kylo can do the same thing, he has not been privy to it. There’s both regret and gratitude in that, even as he now senses a faint hint of amusement, the lightest breath of telepathic laughter. Hands spread around his waist, almost spanning its circumference as lips press over a quickening pulse._

_The buckle of his belt clicks undone even as no fingers come near it. The general’s eyes remain fixed upon the blade, resonant upon the air. And it moves – no,_ he _moves. Pressure gathers in the air about him, electric upon his skin, gentling him upward. Hux’s stomach would have lurched, had it been truly his own; while familiar with weightlessness, both through training and mishaps born of living upon a starship, he has been planet-locked for nearly a decade._

_And this is no malfunction of a gravity drive. It is a_ man _– and the man is very close, a hand upon one hip as the general rises. Bare feet point to the floor, toes just barely clearing it as a low chuckle rings in his ears._

_Now one hand skims over his jacket, slipping inside. Warm fingers press teasingly against his undershirt. The buttons are undone before his fingers even reach them. The fine control of it leaves Hux’s thoughts in turmoil; Ren’s attention is now stretched across so many places, and yet still it feels to be fixed entirely upon the general alone._

_His trousers and underclothes are pressed down first his thighs, then pulled over his feet; though both hands remain about his waist, they are whisked across the room and away. For what little Hux knows of the Force, it seems perhaps an inappropriate use for it. But he receives no sense of the strangeness of that – from either man. Instead this is simply how things_ are _, for them. Ren lurks now as a hunter behind the general: and said general levitates perhaps an inch above the floor, utterly naked, eyes fixed upon a blade held still before his face only by the concentration of a foolish half-trained beast of a man._

_And yet, for all it should be degrading, should be terrifying: there is no fear. The general feels only calm, and perhaps the faintest hint of genuine amusement to be at the centre of Ren’s little game._

_Hux cannot tell if Ren has slipped off any more of his own clothing. It doesn’t seem to matter. Only one hand remains upon his waist; the other must be generating the slick sounds of a cock being worked to full stiffness. Then, the hand about his waist dips low. Fingertips trail over his ass before the fingers slip between his thighs, pressing them apart. But even as his hole tightens, the anticipation of touch and pressure bitter and acid-sweet, it does not come._

_Rather, the thickness of a slicked cock moves between his legs, and no more. Hux is already frowning inside. This act is not new to him. It fact it had been something he’d rather enjoyed in his younger years, when limits of time and circumstance prevented anything more complex. A warm tight place to slide a cock: that was all that was required, and often in the dark corners of his Coruscanti school, that was all he might be permitted._

_Involuntarily, almost, the general’s thighs tighten, holding him there: Ren’s hips press hard into his ass, keeping the general at a height that makes this motion and angle easiest for him. The general cannot protest this; it is pleasurable enough for him too, the fat head of the leaking cock passing over his perineum, the pressure spark-bright and so very welcome._

_But he stares forward, taking this as some kind of obscene challenge – and Hux cannot deny the thrill of it. A dark creature, between his legs, curled around his back: and the general himself stares death in the face while taking pleasure in every moment of it._

_And the crackle of the blade is a strange thing – a siren song, almost, beckoning him forward even as Ren’s desire anchors him to life. Hux has never seen one before. But the oddity of this one makes it ever more impossible to look away, even had the general permitted it. The blade is clearly unstable, the plasma roiling and spitting and vibrantly alive in a way no saber blade should ever be. Not even the strange vents either side of the hilt can temper such unbridled chaos._

_Now one hand moves about the general’s stiff jaw; blunt fingertips pass over his mouth, then press insistent between his lips. The general’s tongue moves, curls, relishes the salt-bitter taste of sweat, and something metallic beneath the oil-slick of the lubricant._

_Ren’s breath is harsh and rhythmic against his shoulder, in time with the thrust of his hips, the slide of the cock between his thighs. Then sharp teeth close over his shoulder, the great body behind him begins the shudder of climax approaching; the tremor of the blade before him twists the general’s lips into his first smile of the evening. It is a path opened before him, red and burning and welcome._

_The fingers in his mouth withdraw; dripping with spit, they move low, curling beneath the general’s balls as they brush over the place where Ren’s cockhead emerges from between his thighs. And there it waits, fingertips teasing and light over the underside of the general’s cock, until Ren gives a low choking gasp. The saber gives a warning tremble, and the general laughs as his own cock twitches, his body quite aflame with the fierce disaster of this moment._

_But the warmth between the general’s legs is but momentary; Ren curls his palm, filled now with his own release, and wraps it about the general’s hard cock. And there, he works it with his come-soaked hand even as the hips still jerk through the last of his orgasm._

_And then, he is withdrawing. But the hands remain: one still jerks the general in knowing rhythm; the other hand slips down between the general’s thighs, taking from them the slick he’d used to ease the way of his own cock. And then the two middle fingers are dragging over the perineum, burying themselves deep in the crease of his ass even as they tease over the hole within. A gasp, unintended, escapes the general’s tight throat. Ren gives a low chuckle, and then those same two fingers are returning, working in._

_“You like it this way?”_

_Both Hux and the general stare down the blade of his weapon, the pathway cut clear to chaos and destruction. “You talk too much,” they say, almost in tandem; Ren’s laughter is a dark and delightful thing, damp against the skin of his racing carotid pulse._

_“So says the propaganda master of the First Order.” Ren’s teeth are all sharp promise and no denial as the words reverberate against his skin. “Perhaps I can put your mouth to better use?”_

_With a twist of a hand, Ren performs a dark magic upon the general’s body; the other hand pumps his cock, drags him ever onwards. The general swallows back his shouts, but he cannot deny such pleasure; he comes hard, head arched back, saber clattering to the floor. And then Ren’s lips are on his, swallowing his gasping breath, making what he can of what the general will never easily give._

_Sweat-damp hair falls in his eyes as Ren leans back, turns him. And he’s still two inches above the floor, the two of them now eye to eye, and Ren’s body is pressed against him in one long trembling arc._

_“Did I win, general?”_

_He tosses his head, hair flicked back from cold eyes. “Did I lose, knight?”_

_And he grinds up into him, half-hard again already. “Perhaps this is how we are both the victor.”_

_The faint laughter bubbles up from low in his chest, throaty and hoarse. “Such dreams you have, Ren,” he whispers, lips pressed to the salt-bitter of his leaping pulse. Already he is winding his legs around his waist, even as Ren’s fingers dip low, work over the sensitised muscle of his ass._

_“Why have dreams?” And his fingers slip in again with fierce promise, lips twisting as he grins, “When you and I, we can rework reality?”_

 

*****

 

After he awakened he spent a long time lying very still. There was precious little to stare at, besides the ceiling. Hux settled for it all the same. Only when his breathing had calmed, his cock gone soft and the nail-marks faded from his palms, did he rise. He looked neither left nor right, saw nothing except the dark as he padded to the ‘fresher. There, before the mirror, he filled the bowl, and pushed one, two, three cupped handfuls of ice water over his face. Then, dripping and silent, he at last met his own eyes.

The harsh fluorescence of the light rendered him a strange and haggard thing. But Hux still recognised himself, somewhere in there. That was probably the worst thing about the entire experience.

As he climbed back into bed, only the flash of his holopad gave the room any illumination: momentary and sharp, repeating like the blare of a siren. In the silence, Hux winced, but could not ignore it. A single message awaited him. He knew who it was by the stark letters alone.

_I NEED TO TALK TO YOU._

Hux put it aside, and closed his eyes. He dreamed no more that night – but he suspected that was simply because he did not sleep again, either.

 

*****

 

Despite the fact he couldn’t have overslept when he’d not been sleeping at all, Hux managed to be very nearly late to work the next morning. When he arrived in his shared office, he wished he’d had the sense just to call in poorly. A figure was hunched in his chair, fiddling with a datapad, refusing to look up even as Hux glared at him from across the room. The vague hilarity emanating from Rana and Sarir hardly made the situation any easier to bear.

Only when it seemed perfectly apparent that Kylo would not rise, nor even acknowledge his presence, did Hux cross the room. And, indeed, Kylo didn’t even move until Hux kicked one leg of the chair. Shifting his weight, eyes still upon some brightly-rendered game he played upon the screen, Kylo snorted.

“You’re ignoring me.”

Though he would have taken great pleasure in cuffing Kylo about his stupid head, Hux kept both hands firmly clenched about his satchel. “Well, I’m not certain what _you_ do all day, but the rest of us have actual jobs to do.”

Tossing the datapad aside with the careless insouciance of one who didn’t have to pay for them, Kylo glared up at Hux from beneath the overlong ends of his fringe. “I need to talk to you.”

The curiosity of his officemates almost burned his skin. Hux glanced to them, but even his best _mind your own business_ glare hardly seemed to deter them a whit. Drawing a deep breath through his nose, he expelled it the same way, and tried to think of something other than murder and dismemberment. “Kylo,” he said, and decided he could be proud of the way he only sounded a _little_ like he was going to stab someone. “Can we do this later?”

Kylo frowned. “I had a dream about you, last night.”

Glancing back to Rana and Sarir told him they were _still_ staring, clearly amused. Scowling now, he turned back to his uninvited guest.

“Kylo,” he said, this time through gritted teeth. “We’ll talk later, all right?”

Leaning back in the chair, Kylo rolled his head towards Hux, pursed his lips together as his eyes took on a faraway sheen. “It was called the _Finalizer_.”

For a moment, the world entire stopped. Hux did not. He felt as though he’d been thrown clear, was floating helpless and suffocating in the black vastness of space. “… _what_?”

Kylo closed his eyes. “And she’s very beautiful.”

Steadying himself only by grasping on to Kylo’s shoulder, hard enough to bruise, he smiled around clenched teeth. “I have work to do.”

And with a sigh Kylo pressed to his feet, Hux’s hand falling away. “I know.” And he ducked his head, met his eyes with dark demand. “But I needed to know you’d come and talk to me.”

The headache that had been percolating since he’d woken after the dream gave a violent spike. Having Kylo so close only reminded him of the way Ren had laid hands upon the general, had worked him to release—

_How does Kylo_ know _any of this?_

Because he knew. He would not be standing so close if he did not. And Hux swallowed hard, shook his head. “Later.” And he smiled, aching and forced. “We’ll talk about it later. I promise.”

“So I’ll come back.” His hand was light upon his shoulder, though it could have weighed as much as a Resurgent-class Destroyer. And his breath shivered over his skin as he turned away on the last word. “ _Later_.”

Taking his place at his desk, unable to watch Kylo leaving, Hux looked blindly to his work. How did he _know_? Had he been poking around Hux’s head as he slept, voyeur upon his dreams? Or had he placed them there himself? Certainly Hux couldn’t believe such a thing _impossible_ —

“Well.” Rana leaned against his desk, one hand stroking over a lekka as she gazed appraisingly upon him. “That’s an interesting admirer you have there.”

Hux reached for a datapad. “Actually, I think he’s insane.”

“You were talking to him at the function last night.” Shifting her weight, smooth and slim beneath the short lines of her dress, she added thoughtfully, “And his mother.”

“Only briefly.” He’d demand she leave, but he was aware of the rules of shared spaces. “Leia Organa is a busy woman.”

“But she made time for you.”

“She made time for her _son_.”

“Who you were with,” she persisted, and Hux slammed his palms down upon the desk. She flinched, even as he glanced up with a perfectly serviceable smile.

“Rana.” Carefully removing his hands from the desk, he folded them neatly on his lap, and relaxed his shoulders. “He saved my life. For some reason, he now believes that makes us friends.” And he smiled, even as he didn’t mean any of it. “He obviously hasn’t had many before.”

“Have you?”

And his voice had taken on the warmth and sound of the vacuum of space when he turned back to his work. “We’re not having this conversation.”

And, fortunately, the desk hid the tremor of his hands. It didn’t make any of it better. It didn’t take back the words Kylo had said.

_The Finalizer._

Though he went about his work as planned, Hux could not prevent his mind from turning the name over and over in his head, a secondary thought process that not even his careful discipline had any hope of suppressing. By day’s end he had only one real answer.

Kylo waited for him, just outside the exit he usually took. In silence he fell into step at Hux’s side, leaving them walking together across the same courtyard they’d shared another evening. With a scowl, Hux caught sight of an empty bench, angled towards it. This was not the kind of conversation best had in public, perhaps.

But then, he didn’t wish to be alone with Kylo, either.

The moment they stood before it, apart from the crowd, he could wait no longer; Hux turned on him with a cold and furious snarl. “You _put_ that dream in my head!”

Kylo didn’t appear terribly surprised by the vehemence of Hux’s accusation, though he still scowled in clear displeasure at such display. “No, I didn’t.”

Tossing his hands into the air was the only way in which Hux could resist the temptation to wrap them around Kylo’s throat. “Can we not play games?”

“I thought you liked playing games.” And at the snarl this earned him, he snorted, rolled his eyes. “Because, I mean, if I told you anything about Chadri Dio, you could end your game with him right here and now. But no. You have to _play_.”

“That’s not your concern.”

If Hux spoke through gritted teeth, Kylo used little more than a child’s whine. “It _is_.”

“Why?” he demanded. “Saving my life doesn’t make it suddenly yours.”

He hadn’t been intending to strike any sort of blow with those words – and yet somehow, he had. Kylo had half-turned, face drawn and suddenly pale, eyes fixed upon the bench. “Can we sit down?” he asked, subdued in a way that almost made Hux regret his tone. “Please?”

But then, it was impossible to regret his anger when Kylo dodged so coyly around the fact that he had somehow been in Hux’s head while he slept. Wrapped in his coat, Hux suppressed a faint shiver, though it wasn’t at all cold.

And Kylo sat down heavily before him, looked up through what suddenly appeared little more than a child’s hurt eyes. “Hux. _Please_.”

Hux wouldn’t have thought himself typically vulnerable to such attack, and yet he found himself taking his place at Kylo’s side all the same. Before them, people moved as a river, not a one of them casting a glance their way. Despite the fact that many would be making their way home, it struck him as unnatural. The charge of the air around Kylo made him impossible to ignore; it was as if he changed the very fabric of the universe simply by existing. It was not something his logical mind could accept. And yet, it did not make it any less true.

“We talked about mind tricks,” he said, dull and flat. And Kylo sighed.

“I didn’t put the dreams in your head.”

Hux pursed his lips, stared straight ahead. “But you know about them.”

And he sighed again, hunched forward over the fists balled in his lap. “Because I’m having them, too.”

Leaving the whisper to stand, Hux continued to watch the ebb and flow of the crowd, feeling as though he’d been separated from them by some unseen barrier. He didn’t find the sensation particularly novel; even when he’d been in his true place, back in the First Order, he’d never really considered himself as one of the crowd. He’d held himself apart, distant. He’d always thought himself worth more than pure anonymity.

“How do you know I have them?” he asked, at last. And Kylo gave a low laugh, did not look up.

“Because of the way you looked at me after the first one.” He paused, shook his head quite suddenly, as if that sharp motion alone could rearrange the apparent chaos of his thoughts. “I could…hear it. Not your thoughts. Just…you. Remembering.”

“Well, that’s not at all embarrassing.” Crossing one leg over the other, satchel balanced upon his lap, Hux glanced up towards the sky. It would be some time yet before the sun would set. “And I can’t say I believe you.”

At last he glanced up, eyes narrowed, disbelieving. “Why would I lie?”

“I hardly know you well enough to say.”

Even Kylo couldn’t deny that simple a truth. By now his hands had moved forward, dug deep into the pockets of his own dark coat. “I’m not you in these dreams,” he said, moody and blackened as a little stormcloud. “I’m _myself_.”

“How nice for you.”

“ _Hux_.”

While he was perfectly aware of being uncooperative and unreasonable, he didn’t appreciate being called out on it. “Well, perhaps if you’re not putting them in there, maybe you’re just picking up on my dreams,” he said, sharp and sudden, sitting up very straight as he turned a full glare upon Kylo. “Which would serve you right, frankly, for fishing around in my head uninvited.”

And he only shook his head. “No.”

“As if you wouldn’t do that sort of thing.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he said, with a grimace. “I just…you’ve never seen my saber.”

A frisson danced along his spine, settled low; he was abruptly glad he’d crossed his legs earlier. “What does that matter?”

“The saber. In your dream.” Kylo was staring straight ahead, now, but his pale skin betrayed the faint flush rising from beneath the high collar of his coat. “Have you ever seen one like it before?”

It felt to be a confession, to say as much aloud. “No.”

And Kylo sighed, even as Hux turned the memory over in his own mind. He already knew what Kylo spoke of; even those with only a cursory knowledge of the Jedi knew that the most common blade was a simple hilt, and a single blade. The lateral vented crossguard was peculiar and overwrought and unnecessary, if only the weapon had been constructed properly from the beginning.

“Nobody else has a saber like mine.” Something close to sorrow resonated beneath Kylo’s words when he glanced over. “I can promise you that.”

But he did not offer to show it to him now. Hux might have asked how Kylo knew he did not need to, if he himself didn’t know why.

And then he spoke, though the words sounded weak to his own ears; he could give no true strength to a counter argument he could not believe in. “You don’t even know we’ve had the same dream.”

“I could feel you.” Kylo raised a hand, waved it, let it fall. “Behind the general. I could _see_ you.”

“I couldn’t see you.”

“But you weren’t looking for me.”

_Yes,_ _I was_. Perhaps Kylo heard the thought; perhaps he did not. Either way Hux said nothing more. Instead he had returned to staring at the people, the fractal movement of their lives, individual and shared, spanning before him in a great singular movement.

“So, sharing dreams with strangers,” he said, flat, harsh. “Is that considered normal?”

“We’re hardly perfect strangers,” Kylo replied, though he didn’t argue the point. “It’s not unknown,” he added instead, and when Hux glanced over it was to find his expression both cagey, and watchful. Apparently, even with the Force to call upon, Kylo was a poor liar indeed.

“What does that mean, then?” he asked, then. “For us, I mean?”

“ _Us_?”

The way Kylo curled his tongue around the noun made Hux regret ever speaking it aloud – but then, surely, it had been inevitable. Apparently Kylo had seen, too, the two of them together. Kylo must have known of the way that the other man had waited for the general. Had _prepared_ himself, for the general.

And Hux swallowed hard, looked away. But still his hand tingled, the remembered heat of scarred skin beneath his palms: a rigid spine, arcing beneath his fingers.

_Ren_.

“Ren.” Hux started as Kylo said the name aloud; it resonated with sharp distaste, and something more he could not hope to describe. “My name was Kylo Ren.”

And Hux stiffened. “That means something to you.”

Again, something shifted about Kylo; an uneasiness in his aura, as if it fought against the very fabric of reality itself. And then, his shoulders sagged, his voice low. “It’s a Jedi ghost story. If you want to give it even that much credit.” He glanced up, oddly weary. “The Knights of Ren.”

The shiver coursed through what seemed his body entire; his blood alight with the memory of hands on skin.

_(Did I lose, knight?_ )

“Are they the ones who come in the night, to spirit off naughty Jedi children?” Hux asked, voice rougher than he’d intended. And Kylo, now with his arms wrapped oddly about his middle, stared off into the distance and snorted with clear disdain.

“If by _spirit away_ you mean _disembowel and dismember_ , then yes.”

“Was Anakin Skywalker a Knight of Ren?”

That earned him a very black look indeed. “He was a _Sith_ , Hux.”

“Sorry.” Though he wasn’t. “It just reminded me of a story I’d heard about him.” From the way Kylo’s look blackened further, Hux felt himself very close to discovering exactly what they taught the apprentices in Jedi school about hand to hand combat. Leaning back on the bench, he tried for deflection instead. “So they’re not Sith, then?”

For a long moment, with those dark eyes fixed upon him, Hux suspected Kylo was about to up and hit him anyway. Then he sighed, looked to the ground. “Not as I’d understand it,” he muttered, low enough that Hux had to strain to make it out. “Bearing in mind they don’t exactly teach you about the Sith at Jedi school.”

“They probably should.” Again, Kylo gave him a disbelieving look; he only shrugged. “Forewarned is forearmed.”

To his considerable surprise, Kylo didn’t argue the point. “The Jedi much preferred to stick their heads in the sand over these things,” he said, very wry. “But no, I don’t think they’re Sith. They’re a group of Force users, to begin with; Sith work by the rule of two.”

“Master, and apprentice.”

“Yes.” He leaned back, gave him a long and considering look. “So they teach you about the Sith in fascist school, then?”

“Shut up, Kylo.”

His sudden grin was wide, brilliant, and it actually very nearly _hurt_. “How am I supposed to tell you about the Knights of Ren if I shut up?” And the grin faded somewhat, head tilting to one side as he gave him a considering look. “Although I could put the information straight into your brain.”

“ _No_.”

“You’d like it.” And before Hux could list off a thousand reasons why he very much wouldn’t, he said, “It’s quick. Efficient. Comprehensive.”

“Kylo. This isn’t helping your case, that you didn’t just stick these stupid dreams into my head for fun.”

With an exaggerated sigh Kylo leaned back, keeping his balance upon the bench despite the fact very little of his body remained in contact with it. The long lines of his body thus revealed, Hux averted his gaze. It could but remind him of how Ren had pressed himself against the general, leaving Hux himself with only the odd and unusual feeling of distinct shame.

And Kylo gathered himself again, though he still didn’t sit up straight. “They’re mercenaries, so far as I remember hearing. The group answers only to the Master Knight, but they can associate themselves with whoever the Master takes contract with.” Again, the subject seemed to bring an odd change in him, the strange ease of but a moment ago now quite evaporated. “They haven’t been heard of in a long time,” he added, though the oddity of his tone suggested again to Hux that he was lying. “Like I said, there are stories. But nothing recent – and by recent, I mean in the last three or four hundred years.”

The thought prickled at the edge of his mind, sudden and fierce and deeply uncomfortable. “No Force user can become immortal, can they?”

“Not that I know of.” Kylo’s thick brows furrowed. “Of course, Emperor Palpatine wanted to be.” The corners of his lips quirked up as he looked at Hux from beneath startlingly long eyelashes. “I don’t think it worked out for him, though.”

Hux ignored that. “ _Kylo Ren_.” The name felt odd upon his tongue; poisoned, almost. As if the addition of one single syllable had taken the boy before him, and made of him the kind of man who brought down chaos and disorder upon the galaxy entire. “So, they change their first name to some form of praenomen, the Ren is used as some sort of shared nomen, then?”

A shrug, light and careless – and entirely manufactured, Hux thought. “I suppose so. I don’t really _know_. Like I said, it’s not something they test us on. We all just told each other stupid stories to scare each other in the night. You know, like kids do.”

Hux didn’t bother to temper the sour note of his next words. “You’d know. You’re still a kid.”

Annoyance flowed down over his features like sudden downpour, eyes turned to dark stormclouds. “No, I’m not.”

Hux had to look away, again – and not because Kylo in a snit was at all impressive. His mind had instead helpfully supplied the memory of one large hand, curled about his own cock while the dark eyes had held his own complete prisoner. Every motion had been knowing, and sure. That had been no child.

“I hope you don’t tell Rey these stupid stories,” he said, voice slightly hoarse; Kylo thankfully appeared not to notice, rolling his eyes skyward even as he stretched out his long legs before him.

“Why not? She loves them.”

Resisting the urge to bury his head in his hands, Hux looked across the city instead. “They really should start sterilising Jedi. You just can’t be trusted around children.”

“In theory Jedi shouldn’t _have_ to be sterilised. And I’m not a Jedi.” Then, in a voice peculiar for all the wrong reasons, Kylo added, “Don’t worry. I don’t plan on having children. Ever.”

“The galaxy no doubt breathes a sigh of relief.”

Perhaps he’d overstepped a boundary; Kylo had certainly fallen to moody silence, staring at the hands held between his knees. Hux had no intention of apologising, but the silence grew long and strained between them. Then, Kylo glanced up, eyes sheened with the bruised-purple shade of the sky above them both.

“The thing is, Hux, you didn’t know anything about the Knights of Ren before.”

“As far as I _know_ , I didn’t,” he corrected; though his voice remained easy enough, he recrossed his legs in the opposite direction, hands tightening upon the edge of the bench. “Perhaps I heard some stupid ghost story too. When I was young and impressionable.”

“Were you _ever_ either of those things?”

The sheer disbelief in Kylo’s voice almost made him laugh. Hux kept it to himself. “One does wonder,” he muttered, already clearing his throat. “Were you scared of them?” At the look Kylo gave him, he pushed harder. “The Knights of Ren?”

“I wasn’t.” But the emphasis on the second word did not match what Hux might have expected; before he could seek clarification Kylo threw up his hands, shook his head. “Look, I just…”

But he said no more, subsiding into silence. The odd look upon his face rendered him young, nearly vulnerable. Hux could not meet that gaze for long.

“Are they visions of the future?” he asked, abrupt.

“No.” But for all the mirrored immediacy of that reply, Kylo remained distant still. “No, I don’t think so. Not like…”

“Like?”

When Kylo met his gaze now, he only shrugged. “I should talk to my uncle.”

“You haven’t already?”

The accusation had little power over him now, it seemed. “I needed to make sure you had them too,” he said. Hux opened his mouth to argue with his logic, closed it when he realised he could not. And then he considered exactly what Kylo had said, fingers curling to fists even as he felt colour flooding into his cheeks.

 “Are you…” Kylo regarded him with an inscrutable expression; Hux scowled, tried again, found the words in a cold and tight voice. “Are you going to tell him everything?”

“ _Everything_?”

The flush was now more anger than embarrassment. “Don’t be an arse, Kylo.”

From the odd grin he wore, Kylo considered doing just that. Then, it faded – like sunbeams, cut off by gathering stormcloud. “No,” he said, “No, it’s not for him.” Shifting, as if suddenly uncomfortable in his body, Kylo stretched out his legs. “That was for us.”

Hux didn’t try to keep his eyes off those long legs, this time. He’d quickly recognised Ren as being Ben Solo, when he’d seen his face – but even then, Ren was older, his body more refined. Kylo was still in adolescence; there was still time for him to grow into the body that still did not quite fit.

“You say that like someone wanted us to see these dreams,” he said eventually, slow. And Kylo drew his legs back, gave him a look so pitying Hux wanted nothing more than to kick him in the teeth.

“It’s the Force.” The simple true belief of that proclamation had Hux turning away. And behind him, Kylo only sighed. “I should go,” he said, slow. “But…”

Hux glanced back. “What?”

“Before I go.” One hand rose, bridged the space between them; Hux jerked back, and Kylo grimaced. “Can I…can we…”

“ _Kylo_.”

“Just once.” While it had been meant as a clear demand, instead, it came out in a pleading desperate rush. “I just want to _know_.”

The very thought of it left Hux weary and wary both. “This is probably why your father doesn’t like me.”

“No, he doesn’t like you because you’re the son of imperialist scum and every time he looks at me he remembers how my grandfather was the attack dog of Palpatine and had him frozen in carbonite.” And he smiled very brightly, if utterly without sincerity. “The only scum I’m allowed to socialise with is _rebel_ scum.”

“He’s involved with the Resistance, then?”

Kylo snorted. “He’s a _smuggler_ , Hux. He goes wherever smugglers are needful.” This he offered without reserve, though the undercurrent of bitterness was clear enough for any who would care enough to notice. “And while there would no doubt be work in Coruscant, I think the cargo would be too high class for his tastes. He’d prefer a cargo of rathtars over some fluffy little hybrid thing destined for a lady’s purse.”

“Is it going _in_ the purse, or is it _making_ the purse?”

Kylo stared at him. Hux couldn’t be overly surprised; it was rare enough that he’d attempt to make a joke, let alone expect to succeed at one. “I suppose that depends on how yappy it is,” he said, very slow, and then rolled his eyes. “I’m serious, Hux.” The great body angled closer – too close, by half. “May I?”

And he withdrew, just enough. “Well, I don’t know. You’re pretty yappy yourself.”

“ _Hux_.”

“Kylo.” It should not have required saying. And yet, Kylo’s dark eyes forced it out of him all the same. “Kylo, you’re seventeen years old.”

The challenge in his eyes and in his voice should have made him laugh. “And?”

And yet Hux only felt so very tired. “And, I’m twenty-two.”

“That’s only five years.”

He hadn’t expected Kylo to understand. That didn’t mean he hadn’t hoped he would. Hope had never been his personal strongpoint, but it didn’t mean it was impossible for him to feel it. “Five years is a long time between adolescence and early adulthood,” he began, and Kylo snorted.

“That rich man’s wife you whore yourself out to – she’s old enough to be your _mother_.”

“And saying things like that – it’s somehow supposed to make me want to kiss you _more_?”

“I…” Despite the short time they’d known each other, Hux had realised very early on the mercurial bent of Kylo’s temper. Never had it seemed so obvious as now, as he lowered his head to his hands, entire body curling in upon itself.

“I…” And he shuddered. “Hux. I can’t stop _thinking_ about it.”

“Kylo.” Hux almost managed to be gentle in his advice, despite the fact he barely knew how to take it himself. “You’d be best just to let it go.”

“I don’t _want_ to.”

It should have been utterly unattractive. Instead, it tugged at him, made him want to draw closer yet even as he inched away. “Whatever these dreams are…they aren’t us.”

Kylo glanced up, eyes dark, expression pale and wild. “But they could be.”

“Do you really believe that?”

Kylo continued to stare – and they were really such very dark eyes. So very different to what he’d known in the dreams. One hand raked back through his hair; a nervous gesture rarely permitted in private, let alone in public. He knew it for a mistake even before he spoke the words loud.

“We can’t do it out here.”

“That’s fine.” Already Kylo had taken to his feet, eyes somehow both bright and dark, all at once. “I know a place.”

Without even looking back to see if Hux followed, Kylo strode away. Some childish part of him wanted to turn, to take the escape where it was offered. And yet Hux only followed, quickening his step until he drew level with him. That was itself a peculiar sensation; in this they seemed to walk in the footsteps of the general and the knight, striding together through the corridors of their great starship. Hux held his silence on all fronts, but the roiling psychic energy coming off Kylo _hurt_ , even to a non-sensitive such as himself.

Kylo led them back into the capitol buildings, but not to any area Hux knew. The Corellian embassy was somewhere this way, but Kylo turned their path downstairs; these were the old archives, cleared out but unused since the days of the Jedi. Choosing a door seemingly at random, Kylo keyed the panel, stepped in first. Hux followed, and as the door swung closed Kylo gave no chance for speech, catching Hux’s face between his own and fiercely pushing their mouths together.

It was wet and sloppy and inexpert – but Kylo crowded him up against the door, and when Hux steadied himself with both hands pressed flat against his chest, he could feel hard muscle and a pounding heart. And he kissed back, tasted caf and mint, found his lips wide and soft and invitingly easy to bite.

But Hux did not. He drew back even as Kylo pushed forward, turning his face away with eyes tightly closed, gasping for breath. From this short encounter, he could draw two rapid conclusions: one, Kylo had never done this before. And secondly, following close on the heels of the first: a wave of possessiveness that kicked the breath from his lungs more surely than the clumsy kiss ever could have.

_No-one else can have this._

And the second time, when Kylo pressed their bodies together and took another kiss uninvited, Hux found instead the taste of ash and dust. Already Kylo had grown bolder, drawing on some experience that was not technically his own; he kissed like he was a knight, and Hux was his general, and this was the world that they could unmake and reshape to their fierce and furious will.

Even as their hips pressed together, the evidence of arousal already undeniable and worsening, Hux pursed his lips, twisted his head away. Kylo followed, lips half-opened on a snarl, seeking his out; Hux caught him about the chin, held him still as he looked into eyes turned black and wild. Some part of him trembled to see it. The rest of him remained very still, and very cold.

“Stop,” he said, clear as ice. And Kylo only shook his head free, latching his lips upon his throat. “Kylo, _stop_ _it_.” And then, as teeth closed upon his skin: “ _Ben_.”

He did stop. But it was no true halt – it was the moment of calm as the storm crossed its centre. Utter fury erupted from deep within the tremor of his great body, the large hands closing on his shoulders, shoving him up and against the wall. Held immobile, Hux could not move: and before him, hair a dark tangle and eyes twinned black holes in his too-pale face, Kylo was an alien thing.

Alien, and yet still so familiar.

“That’s _not_ my _name_ ,” he hissed, low and pulsing, and Hux’s eyes narrowed to perfect slits. He remembered the general. He remembered his easy command, the way he moved with confidence and power through the halls of his destroyer, above the plains of his superweapon.

“Kylo.” And he twisted his lip to a sneer. “Put me down or I will never speak to you ever again.”

Kylo did let go – and the horror that spread across his face was nothing of the knight they had dreamed of. Already Hux’s shoulders ached with bruises yet unseen, and when Kylo reached forward, he turned away.

“You need to go.”

He managed to speak with a voice both pleading and demanding all at once. “ _Hux_.”

“No.” His hands shook where he smoothed them out over tunic and trousers, though he would not have named it fear. Rather, it was a fierce shot of adrenaline, urging him on to foolishness that could not be undone, if indulged.

And Hux straightened his back, reached out for the door panel. “I will not allow my destiny to be dictated by anything as ephemeral and inexact as dreams.”

Kylo’s hand closed over his, fingers clammy where they tangled in his own. “I’m not a dream,” he said, rough and desperate, yanking him backward. “I’m real.” And his arms curled about him from behind, drew him back against that hard body. “Hux. I’m _here_.”

That had become more a plea than any sort of statement. Even as Hux yanked himself free his body whispered slyly of how good it would feel – to turn back, to move forward. To press himself against the other and take what Kylo would surely never deny.

Hux kept his hands to himself.

“If you’re not going to let me leave,” he said, very flat, “then you should be the one to go.”

“I could leave this room,” he agreed; Kylo had tilted his chin high, eyes fixed and staring. “But I’ll never leave you.”

“Somehow, I wouldn’t expect you to.” And he waved one hand at the doorway. “Good night, Kylo.”

But even as Kylo bent his head, moving towards the door, Hux knew the true horror of it wasn’t the creature he’d felt, in Kylo’s mind.

It was that he wanted to see it again.

And of course, it could never be so easy. Kylo stopped at the door, glanced back. Hux wanted nothing so much to tell him to get lost. But those dark eyes were as the event horizon of twinned dying stars, ever calling him onward to his ending.

“There was something wrong with me,” he said, sudden and low. “When I was a kid.”

“There’s still something wrong with you now.” When he smiled, he actually meant it. “Sorry.”

Rather than taking actual offense, Hux sensed only some great wellspring of sadness from Kylo. And his dark gaze had wandered somewhere above Hux’s head, fixing upon a shelf of ancient books as he sighed, said soft, “Rey’s mother fixed it.”

Even without a name, the mention of her was an invocation, sending a rich and sparking shiver down his own spine. “Where _is_ Rey’s mother?”

With shoulders now hunched forward, Kylo looked nothing if not very young, and very tired. “I don’t know.”

“What’s her name?”

“I don’t _know_.”

And he crossed his arms over his chest, feeling the rabbit-quick beat of his own heart. “No wonder Jedi have intimacy issues.”

That made him scoff. “She’s not a Jedi. Though she’s strong in the Force.” And he glanced up to him at last, hand hovering but a moment from the door panel. “She has red hair, actually. Like yours. Well, darker, and longer, but still.” And his expression turned featureless, unreadable. “Maybe that’s why I wanted you. Because you reminded me of her.”

Hux’s fingers tightened about his own arms. “You saved me, Kylo. Not the other way around.”

“For now.” His hand slammed down hard enough on the panel to break it. “Good night, Hux.”

He shook his head, sighed. “Good night, Kylo.”

With the panel sparking and cracked, the door could not close. As he leaned back against the nearest bookshelf, Hux pressed the heel of one hand to his aching forehead and supposed it made sense enough. Given the conversation they’d just shared, he suspected there was no way of undoing whatever it was they’d now opened between them, either.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, as it turns out: I am still writing this thing! It's both terrifying and rather lovely, because I realise it's a bit too weird to really make much sense, or have much general appeal, but...my brain wants to know where this is going. And the comments I've been left so far have been so generous and so wonderful, and I just...thank you. <3 Writing is a lonely business indeed, and it's nice to have you along.
> 
> In other news, as I was pretending to read this over earlier I was listening to the Romeo + Juliet OST of yesteryear and laughing because I used to write badfic to the same soundtrack back in the nineties. Ah, how some things never change. With that said, there's a lovely line from a song in there that just suits these two down to the ground: [_see I'll give you the stars, from the bruised evening sky, in a crown of jewels for your head, now_]().
> 
> Ah, those Emperor!Hux feels. They never do die, do they.

“I need to return to Uyter.”

His smile felt painted on, but then he’d mastered the art of it a long time ago. Bowing forward from the waist, Hux straightened, smiled wider. “Then I wish you a pleasant trip.” It would hardly be the first time she had returned to her homeworld while he’d been on her staff, though she went but rarely. It still stung in a way he had not expected, deep and reaching and dark.

Gillen’s own face remained still, thoughtful. “I would like you to come with me.”

“I…” Clearing his throat only just returned him mastery over the tremor of his words. “You know I cannot.”

“It can be arranged.”

This time, the strange lump in his throat made it very nearly impossible for him to speak at all. “Please don’t tease me.”

She rose from behind the desk with all the grace of the morning sun, stepped easily around its long length to stand before him. “Brendol,” she said, pale eyes searching, watchful. “Why would I tease you?”

How he wished to look away. But he had been trained to military precision, honed to a careful point. And so he met her eyes, said simple, honest: “I can’t imagine they would allow it.”

“Because of your father?” For the first time he saw a flicker of genuine dislike across her lovely features; in that, he knew he was doomed. “I know you live in the shadow of his deeds – and misdeeds, as it were.” When she stepped closer, away from the windows, she herself fell to the dark; her eyes, once so blue, now burned as dark as Kylo’s own. “But in the end, he is only a small person,” she said, low, fierce. “You could be something so much bigger. More important. And you do not deserve to be held back, simply because of the choices he made for you.”

Saying the words aloud very nearly hurt. But he could not deny her, not when she seemed a warrior upon the verge of battle. “I would like to go.”

“Then I will see what can be arranged.” The sudden gentle smile mirrored the softness of her words, their texture and tone as soft as a mother’s lullaby. “You can be more than what this life has given you, Hux,” she murmured. And then when she stepped back, into the light, her eyes burned brilliant blue once more. “But then, I didn’t really need to tell you that.”

The strong presence over him had his face cast down, fingers tangled before his hips. “Perhaps not.”

“Perhaps.” She’d drifted away now, to the next set-up of her great desk. One trailing hand drifted over stocks of holopads and flimsi, eyes quick and calculating. “You’ve been associating with Senator Organa’s son.”

His eyes snapped up from where they followed her hands. “I – yes.” At the raised, half-amused eyebrow he received, he bit down on his irritation. “It’s…a personal thing. Not a professional one.” And then, simply for relevance and sake of completion: “I’ve barely met the senator herself.”

With that easy elegance so inherent to personality and form, Gillen seated herself in her chair, smoothed out the lines of her long gown. “It’s not that I disapprove, Brendol,” she said, and the small quirk of her lips was the closest he’d ever seen her to laughing. “I was simply curious.”

Though it could only be poor form to avert his eyes now, Hux could not meet hers; the tips of his ears burned as he glanced to the window, to the shifting city beyond. “He’s a strange child.”

“But not so young as all that, surely.”

Now his cheeks had taken on high colour. “It depends on the topic of conversation.”

“Oh?”

Turning back to her at last, he smoothed his hands over his tunic, wished he had something to distract his hands with: holopad, teacup, stylus. “In some things, he is…very young.” Swallowing, regaining composure, he added, wry, “In others, not so much.”

Gillen herself had set about a holoprojector; upon her desk, a small scale projection of Uyter itself had appeared, begun to rotate. Though she said nothing, did not even glance to it, the clear temptation of it almost hurt his eyes to look at.

“You say it is personal,” she said, very soft, her homeworld reflected in her pale eyes. Taking a breath, deep and low, Hux let it go on a count of ten, and did not smile.

“He saved my life. That’s all it is.”

“It could be professional.”

That almost earned a sharp bark of laughter; had he not been in her very office, with its warm rich panelling and golden light spilling from the scattered lamps, he might have indulged. “He’s not a political animal, if that is what you are meaning.” And then his eyes narrowed, head lightly shaking. “Which isn’t to say he’s entirely ignorant of what goes on around him. He’s Leia Organa’s son, after all.”

Gillen rose again, moving towards the great windows. Though she stood with her back to him, he sensed of her no dismissal; as a moth drawn to flame he came to her side, stood silent there. The city lay spread before them both, laid out across the entire land surface of the planet in endless cancerous growth even as they stood here at its centre, upon its very beating heart.

“Do you speak much with Senator Organa?”

She hummed lightly, then shook her head. “Not often. While our goals are not unrelated, we only have small things in common.” The sidelong glance she gave him was that of a conspirator; it twisted Hux’s heart into forms he had not known were possible. “She’s a very interesting woman.”

“I met her,” he said, too quick, a child seeking a parent’s approval. One eyebrow arched, curious and careful.

“At the gala?”

“Yes.” A thousand words curled upon the tip of his tongue, tangled and twisted; with great difficulty he teased them apart, used that gift of the silvertongue that his many years of oratory had given him. “I…I hadn’t known much of the Force, before I met Kylo. Ben. Ben Solo.”

One hand, bare of jewellery, rose to adjust the high collar of her robe; her head had tilted towards him, and he drew an uncertain breath.

“He prefers to be called Kylo.” That small smile grew but a little wider, and he gave a little huffing chuckle of his own. “No, I don’t know why. But it feels easier to humour him.”

“It’s only humouring him?”

His eyes flicked to the floor; while he often could control the flush of his traitorous skin around other people, Gillen had always made herself the exception. “I can feel the Force in him. At least, I presume it’s the Force. He’s not like other people.”

“And neither is his mother.”

Briefly, he closed his eyes. But to think of her permitted no darkness; he could remember only light, harsh and bright and true. “No.”

When at last he looked to her again, it was to find her in quiet contemplation, long fingers pressed to her chin and one elbow cupped in the opposite palm. It left her lovely as a sculpture, high upon her plinth, well beyond his reach.

“Would you like to meet him?”

“No.” As if from a dream she stirred at his question, gave him an oddly melancholy look. “No, I don’t think it’s necessary.”

“That might be for the best.” In truth, Hux could not imagine what they might have spoken of; Nahani Gillen was the calm core of the galaxy, where Kylo could not help but be the chaotic outworlds upon the twisted distant rim. But he frowned, offered the one thing Kylo had mentioned. “He did speak of her wishing to step down as the Senator of Corellia. To become an independent.”

“Yes. There are those of us who have heard this.” Now cupping both elbows, Gillen returned her attention to the city, eyes shuttered and dark. “Leia Organa worries for the safety of the New Republic.”

Hux blinked. “From what?”

“The First Order, of course.”

He had never really grown accustomed to hearing that name upon the lips of those born and bred to the New Republic. Where he’d grown to adolescence, it had been a mantra, a touchstone: two words that promised safety and security and a new world order where all might reach the potential assigned to them.

On the lips of the Republic, it became a coarse, filthy thing: an invocation of greed and ruin and selfish desire. But Gillen spoke it simply. And he inclined towards her, a sudden headache behind his eyes, his heart aching with every beat even when he knew not why that should be.

“But there are trade restrictions. Disarmament treaties. Peace accords.” While permitted little information, his father’s restrictions could not take the holonet from Hux. “The New Republic has a chokehold on their operations,” he continued, and still did not know why it hurt to say so aloud. “They’ve been driven to the Unknown Regions, and so far as anyone knows, they’ll never move beyond their fiefdom there. They simply can’t access the resources, or the manpower. So what matter have they to the core words?”

Still she looked forward, voice lovely and low. “Was that your experience of them, Brendol?”

This time he couldn’t hold back the bitter laughter. “I was a _child_.” In truth, he’d never cared much for Coruscant. As he turned his eyes out to the city now, saw it hunched before him like a lurking half-slumbering beast, he knew he’d have despised it even had it not become his prison. “They wanted my father for that information. Not me.”

“Perhaps.” She shifted beside him, ever light upon her unseen feet. “They do not speak of these things openly, but the First Order has more influence in the Unknown Regions than the Senate can hope to control. Or so says Senator Organa.” He could feel her gaze shifting to him now. “And you know yourself, Senator Organa knows things that others might not.”

“Well. It’s another good reason to take the Senate to Uyter.” Turning from the city, leaving it resolutely at his back, Hux folded his hands at the small of his back and looked unblinking towards her. “Putting the core worlds between us and the Unknown Regions could but be a boon.”

Her own gaze had returned to the city, shuttered and dark. “Perhaps.”

Despite the silence that followed, Hux could mark no true end of their conversation. Clearly his throat, he spoke with the clipped deference learned at the knee of a commandant, at the edge of an army.

“Senator.”

“Yes, Brendol?”

And yet, he knew he sounded as a child speaking of strangely-wrought shadows when he asked it. “Have they really grown so powerful?”

Gillen was a high ranking senator, as they went. But even she could not be privy to all that went on within these halls. “In truth – nobody can know for certain,” she said, careful. “But Senator Organa and those of her circle feel the time has come for us to find out.”

Something like excitement, something like fear; both sensations warred in his chest, having long since taken his heart harsh prisoner. Hux had observed Leia’s coiled power for but a scarce moment. It had been enough. Hux knew that Organa would not move thus for no reason – and that few indeed could hope to stand against her in full flame.

With a nod, he said only, “I see.”

“But you need not worry.” Her hand rested warm upon his, the unadorned fingers long and gentle. “You’re one of my own, now. You shall come with me to Uyter, and leave this place behind.”

And when he smiled, it was as easy as gentle as the lost smiles of his earliest child, in the dismal moors of half-forgotten Arkanis. “I would like that.”

“Good day then, Brendol.”

And when he left her, he actually had hopes that it actually might be.

 

*****

 

There was no Kylo waiting for him outside the Senate this time. Hux took a transport to the house alone, and in a certain kind of blessed peace. Kylo managed to startle him all the same; when Hux drew close to the house it was to find a dark figure hunched outside, sulking upon the steps that led up to the great building at his bowed back.

Hux stood before him, silent for a long moment, not knowing who ought to speak first. Then he sighed, and gave up entirely on ever understanding Kylo’s dramatics.

“Is something wrong?”

Though he stared at the ground, Hux didn’t need to see Kylo’s face to recognise the scowl he wore. “My mother can’t come to dinner tonight, either.”

A sharp disappointment flared, though he snuffed it out a moment later; it was not as if he’d really thought she would discuss her suspicions of the First Order with him. Leia Organa had been called many things in her time; an outright fool had never been one of them. “That’s fine.” When this earned him no reply, he peered around Kylo to the front door, shifted his weight in his work shoes. “So, am I disinvited now?”

“I – no.” Having looked up at last, Kylo now wore an expression halfway between mutinous and uncertain. “I just thought maybe you wouldn’t want to come after all. If she wasn’t here.”

“So you’re out here to – what? Drag me inside? Kick my ass if I try to leave?”

“I don’t _know_.” The restless energy that always coiled inside him burst free now; as Hux stood very still, Kylo began to pace with long fierce strides; five in one direction, four in the other. He’d made the return journey perhaps four furious times before Hux sighed, resisting the urge to drag his hand through his hair.

“Kylo.” It didn’t stop him. “I’m not angry. Your mother is a very busy woman. I understand that.”

At that he pulled up short, his shout enough to reverberate around what felt to be the entire cul de sac. “She _promised_ she’d be here!”

The guards at the gate averted their eyes, said nothing to even each other, Hux noticed. It had him rolling his eyes to realise they apparently found nothing unusual in the senator’s son throwing a fit out on the street, though Hux knew enough of soldiers to recognise clear tension in the way they stood.

“Where’s Rey?”

Kylo’s entire form shuddered, as if the quickfire subject change had moved through him like electric shock. “What? Why?”

“I just want to know: are we all having dinner together, or is it completely cancelled?” Already he was reaching for his holopad, brow creased as he began to mentally make a checklist. “Because if so, we could all go out. Find some little diner, treat your cousin to something fried in grease and lathered in hot sauce.”

The way Kylo looked him up and down might have been insulting, had it not been Ben Organa Solo on the other end of the incredulous disbelief. Those dark eyes drank deep of the neat pressed lines of his clothing, the smart little satchel, the perfect coiffure of his hair. And then he all but threw his hands into the air. “Do you even know what a real diner _is_?”

Hux’s gaze held unblinking, took no prisoners. “Try me.”

From the sudden glint in his own eyes, Kylo would have taken the challenge at a running start. Then his shoulders slumped as he turned back to the house. “The kitchens have already got dinner made. Or mostly made. I think my mother would throw a fit if she knew that not only was dinner ruined by her not showing up, but that I didn’t let you eat what she’d prepared for you.”

Even as he slid the holopad back into his satchel, that gave him pause – and an uncomfortable one, curling and uncurling low in his gut. “She _made_ it?”

“No, but she called your office. Found out your favourite meals.” And by the way Kylo wouldn’t meant his eyes, the unspoken words felt almost shouted – _because I couldn’t tell her what they were_.

“Kylo.” His headache, the one that so often seemed to flare around the younger man, began a brief staccato beat behind his eyes. “Just: whatever you want. We’ll do that.”

For a long moment he continued to sulk, staring off into the middle distance like some fool hero contemplating his journey in the worst kind of holomovie tripe. And then his head snapped round, eyes far too bright for their dark colour. “I want to show you my saber.”

Hux folded his arms across his chest. “You’re underage.”

“No, my _actual_ saber. Lightsaber, even. Kriff, Hux, you’re such an old pervert.” Then, his generous lips curved into something devilish and demanding. “Although, if you _want_ to see—”

“Just – no. Stop it.” Stepping past Kylo, he could at least be glad he’d bullied his flush into not rising this time. “Let’s go inside.”

This time Kylo guided him deeper into the house than ever before; they’d taken the wide staircase upwards, quick and mirrored in their steps. Even as Hux kept easy pace with him, he could not quash the fear that Kylo might going to lead him to his bedroom. That would be too much, indeed; the very thought of it clenched his stomach to something the size of a treenut, hard and heavy in his gut.

But Kylo instead turned away from the wing that presumably housed the family’s sleeping quarters. At the far end of its opposite number, he guided them into a great room that Hux could not quite hide his shock at. In these mansions built for senators, it had presumably been designed as some sort of boardroom, one that might double as a small ballroom for more intimate functions.

Leia Organa had had it made over into a training salle instead. The floors had been stripped back to wood, then lined with soft mats. The walls had received much the same treatment, save for where tall weaponracks stood, neatly stacked with wooden training implements and clean towels.

Kylo held up a hand just across the threshold, eyes narrowed. “Wait here a second,” he said, already toeing at his foot with the other as he glanced only ahead. “And take your shoes off.”

Kylo had loped across the room, disappearing into an attached room before Hux could even think to reply. A moment later, he did as asked; while he hadn’t been raised to take orders the likes of which Kylo might offer, he was not a man to deny logic where it was warranted. Tucking his socks into his shoes, he then padded barefoot out into the centre of the room. There, he frowned; shedding his heavier outercoat, he returned to the racks. There he laid it, folded neatly, beside his shoes with their toes pointed to the wall. Only then did he move back to the centre. With spine straight, and chin tilted upward, he closed his eyes, breathed deep and low. In and out. Slow and knowing.

“You train?”

Opening his eyes, Hux swallowed hard. Kylo stood not three feet from him, his approach having been quite unheard and unfelt. He was also barefoot, and stripped to a sleeveless undershirt with loosely-cinched trousers hung low on his hips. A good mass of his hair had been tied back, though the front was too short, falling into his eyes with reckless abandon.

Hux had made a terrible mistake.

“Relax.” Kylo’s grin was far too wide, far too easy. “I’m not going to throw it at you.”

The fierce flush up his cheeks was his body’s cruellest betrayal. But Kylo thankfully was not even looking at him; instead, his long fingers had closed thoughtful about the hilt where it clipped to the loop of his trousers. For a long moment he held it still. And then he pulled it free, turned; his arm extended, expression almost shy. “Do you want to see it?”

His engineer’s mind carolled with fierce and entirely childish delight; in this Hux wanted nothing more than to take it in his hands, and then all to pieces. But his hands, he kept firmly folded behind his back. “Show it to me.”

He had not quite meant it that way: a low order, demanding and unable to be denied. A shiver moved clear down Kylo’s spine, his eyes darkening, the edges of his smile sharpening to clear point. “You might want to take a step backwards.”

Hux, spine straight and fingers curled tight together, did not move. “I’m fine.”

That earned him a low snort, but an odd fondness softened the strangeness of his earlier mad grin. “Whatever you like, general.”

“Don’t call me that.”

The whipcrack words did not deter him. Instead, his eyes glittered with something dangerously close to victory as he moved into a low stance, the lightsaber’s hilt tilted upward. Then: the plasma birthed itself to blazing life, the vents ignited a moment after the main shaft. Quite against his better judgement Hux drew a startled breath, eyes very wide even as he leaned faintly forward, lodestone drawn to magnetite.

“Is it safe?”

Kylo twirled the blade in sharp circle, arrested it in original configuration, all the time his eyes never once breaking their fixation upon Hux alone. “Well, where would be the fun in that?”

To his considerable credit, Kylo held his position as Hux moved around him. Despite the way he threw himself about, lazy and languid and long-boned, he maintained a perfect posture now. The long muscles, held tight, showed no sign of strain; every angle of him was perfect, a skilled rendition of control and mastery born of a force of absolute chaos.

When he had come again to the front, Hux took three neat steps back. And then, easy and short: “When you are ready.”

Only that mad grin ruined the illusion of a perfect warrior. And then it did not matter; Kylo moved into a series of katas, lightning quick and burning, one after the other. The dream memory of Ren moved as a ghost behind him, born of memories that were not even Hux’s own, not truly. Kylo, while clearly skilled, held clearly less experience. It gave his display something odd: something _cleaner_.

By comparison Ren’s every movement had been strange and furious; focused and demanding, as if he fought against the very fabric of the galaxy itself. This was but an exercise, for Kylo. An expression of what had been many years of training. But still, there was more than that. It took Hux a long moment to realise it as _joy_. Kylo took simple pleasure from his skill, from his connection to what they named as the Force. He did it not because he was driven, but because it was a part of him he welcomed, enjoyed, relished in.

As Kylo began to wind down, Hux became aware more of his own body than the fluid motion of Kylo’s; for the first time he realised he was breathing hard, matching his rhythm and depth to Kylo’s own. And then, before he’d had time to consider it: Kylo stood close before him. Too close. His dark head had tilted, the sweat-damp hair a wild dark corona about the flush of his pale face.

And he frowned, the hum of the plasma weapon low pulse at his side. “You sound tired.”

Wordless, Hux held his breath for a moment, settled it down. Still his heartbeat raced, though he’d not taken so much as a single step. “I still think that thing is dangerous,” he said evenly. Kylo snorted, and with one press of his thumb the blade vanished entirely.

“Well, Uncle Luke doesn’t exactly approve.” His hands were sure where they moved to reattach it to his belt loop. “But it’s mine.”

 _It’s Kylo Ren’s_.

Hux swallowed. “When is dinner?”

“Soon.” Two fingers rose, pinched at the material of his undershirt even as his nose wrinkled. “Ugh. I should shower.” When he glanced up, eyes mischievous beneath the long sweep of dark lashes, Hux wanted to punch him. Even after that display of clear power and strength, he would have done it.

“Don’t even think it,” he growled, and Kylo just grinned.

“Too late.” But he was raising one well-toned arm, pointing past his shoulder. “Look, if you go downstairs, take a left, you’ll find the dining room. Rey might even be there, waiting for you.” He almost rolled his eyes as he added, somehow faintly irked, “She knows you’re here.”

“More Force nonsense?”

The affront would never cease to amuse Hux. “That nonsense saved your _life_.”

“So it did.” With a grin, he added, mocking, “Don’t take too long, Kylo. It’s rude to keep your guests waiting.”

“No.” Those damned dark eyes took a lingering route up and down his body. “No, it won’t take long.”

This time, the flush burned bright on his cheeks; Hux cursed himself for a fool even as Kylo turned, took two steps away. But before he could do the same Kylo stopped, tilted back. All traces of his bawdy humour had quite evaporated.

“I never told you. Why I left the Jedi school, I mean.”

Hux held his silence. He’d always known when best to keep even his silvered tongue still.

When Kylo pushed his hand back through his hair, it loosed the band; though it fell to the floor, he made no motion to pick it up. He stared only at Hux instead, hair a dark matter cloud about his pale face. “I had a dream,” he said, slow, almost ponderous, as if he dreamed it again at this very moment. “And Master Luke had the same dream. At the same time.”

The words shivered along his skin; his voice felt very far away. “Yes, this would have been pertinent information, if given earlier. That you and I are not the only ones sharing strange dreams.”

Kylo stared at him, all the flush of earlier exertion quite gone. His pale skin had taken on the dull colour and sheen of bleached bone. “I dreamed that I killed everyone at the school. Everyone but Uncle Luke.”

Hux did not realise his hands had tightened to fists until he tried to relax them, realised the nails had bit firmly into flesh. “Well.” He tilted his chin upward, thoughts blank, not yet computed. “That’s certainly disturbing.”

And Kylo’s hand had descended, wrapped about the hilt at his side. His eyes never once moved from Hux’s own. “With this saber.”

A shiver moved through him, cold as winterstorm. “So why do you keep it?”

“Because it’s mine.” And he looked away, to something behind Hux – something that could not be seen. “And I made a choice.”

Though Hux closed his eyes, it did nothing to alter the strangeness of the moment – for it felt to him that the universe itself shimmered, twisted before him even as it split now in two: twinned branches, each arching off into unseen path and shadow. And he turned his head, turned away.

“I’d better go see what Rey is doing.”

“I dreamed of you, too.” Kylo’s voice remained low, almost somnolent. “All in white.”

Hux kept his eyes upon the door. “Like Rey.”

“Like a Grand Admiral.”

And he half-turned, looking back. But then, he could never go back. “The First Order doesn’t have that rank.”

“No.” Kylo stood motionless before him, hands folded before his hips, eyes dark and watchful. “It doesn’t have an Emperor, either.”

This time, the shiver along his spine was pure fire, desperate and sudden. “Are you reading my mind?”

“I don’t have to.” His body swayed, as if to step forward. But then, he did not move. “I know. I knew from the dream.”

“We can’t live our lives by the dictates of _dreams_ , Kylo.”

“But we can live our lives.” And now Kylo came to him, hands upon his shoulders as though he had a mind to shake him. But he did not. Only the fierce emotion of his dark eyes shook Hux to his very core. “This isn’t the way your life is supposed to be.”

This was too close indeed. The scent of sweat, damp hair in his searching dark eyes: too close. One hand rose quite without permission, laid itself upon his cheek, found it flushed and warm.

Kylo’s head ducked, took his lips in fierce, uninvited kiss. Hux responded without thought, uncaring in this moment of consequence; strong arms enfolded him, pulled them chest to chest even as his own grasped at his waist, their groins pressed even closer together.

A moment later he snatched his lips free, stumbled backward, half-bent with the heel of one hand pressed to his mouth. “ _No_.”

And he had to duck away from Kylo’s reaching arm, the wild demand of his dark eyes. “Why not?”

“Because I said no!” Straightening, brushing at his clothes, wrinkling at the faint dampness of Kylo’s transferred sweat, he scowled at him from safe distance. “And you cannot presume my consent just because we _dreamed_ it. This is reality, Kylo. And I’m saying no.”

Like a child about a tantrum, Kylo flopped dramatically to the floor. Hux only stared, and perhaps that was a mistake when Kylo rolled his eyes upward, mutinous and petulant. “Well, can I—”

“No.”

“It’s just…I’m…can you…like, _watch_ , and I’ll just jerk—”

“ _No_.”

Again, sulking, Kylo gathered up his knees to rest his elbows upon them. “You’re a lot more fun in your dreams.”

His spine stiffened. “I’m a different person there.”

“Not completely.” Tilting his head, eyes narrowed, his voice pitched so low as to resonate terribly close to the pitch of Kylo Ren’s vocal modulator. “I see him, in you.”

He turned resolutely for the door. “Go shower. I’m going to go talk to your cousin.”

“She’s not any more normal than I am, you know,” Kylo called after him, and Hux flipped a hand back in fierce dismissal.

“Yes, but she’s eight years old. It’s less annoying in children.”

“Oh, so I’m not a child, then?”

It was a mistake, but still he turned back. “ _Kylo_.”

And of course, the little idiot blew him a kiss. This time, Hux really did turn his back and leave, and tried to pretend it didn’t matter. That it wasn’t too late.

 

*****

 

“They’re poking around.”

Hux glanced up from where he had been slotting in the pod for his caf, eyebrows drawn down into deep groove. “Excuse me?”

His father did not look up from where he read the news on his datapad; his usual routine could not be interrupted even for conversation he himself had initiated. “They’ve been asking questions about you.”

“Who is the _we_ that we’re talking about here?”

“Gillen’s people.” One thick finger stabbed at the screen, pressed as he held something, then flicked it to electronic oblivion. “They’re trying to determine what might be done in relation to the restrictions that keep you here.”

Stiffly, now – though discourse with Brendol Hux Sr. could be little else – Hux tilted his chin upward, kept his voice even while his mind began to unravel somewhere at the seams. “I didn’t realise they needed your opinion.”

That had him flicking his eyes upward, his stare cold and unforgiving. “Were you not planning on asking me yourself, then?”

The terrible urge to laugh bubbled up from low in his gut; he swallowed hard, its taste bitter upon his tongue even when he did not let it escape. “I wasn’t aware I required your permission.”

A half-curled smile twisted the man’s lips, though he said nothing more. He did not need to. His rich disapproval crackled like lightning upon the air between them even as Hux Sr. looked back down to his datapad. Hux remained stiff and still on the other side of the kitchen. He’d seen cornered animals more at rest than himself in this moment.

A faint chime sent a frisson down his spine; he turned to hide his startled jump, the caf ready and waiting. Inserting a cup, Hux watched the liquid flow into the rigid cup, the dark swirl like a galaxy being rendered in reverse upon the pale porcelain. While it felt merely hot between his hands, it burned upon his tongue. He did not move to bridge the space between them, but neither did he leave.

He had not been excused. Hux had to despair of whether he ever would be.

And then he flinched; Hux Sr. had pushed his datapad aside with a grating shriek, his unforgiving gaze fixed upon his son. “They’ll never let you leave, Brendol.” The expression he wore was a mask of perfect and practiced disdain. “Not now – and not ever.”

His hands ached to coil at the small of his back, the military stance ingrained in him very nearly from the first day he’d learned to stand alone. “I may be your son,” he said, careful and precise, “But I am still my own man.”

He scoffed, rising from the table with his cup in hand. “That Gillen tells you so, does she?” Pressing past Hux, forcing him to take a step back or be stepped upon, he shook his head with clear disbelief. “She has no idea.”

“She’s a brilliant woman.”

“Which makes one wonder why she bothers with you.” Standing beside him, Hux was reminded of the uncomfortable fact that his father stood taller than he did; he was taller than even Ren himself, and even those mere inches meant something when he shook his head, looked down upon him. “You’re damaged goods.” And he sounded almost pitying when he added, “And yes, you did have potential. Once. But it’s gone, now.”

The last time Hux had wept in front of his father, he’d barely reached the man’s knees. Now, even as his eyes burned and his throat tightened, he spoke slow and even. “So why did you do it?” he asked. “Why did you even come here?”

The man snorted, adjusted his cup beneath the machine’s vent. “Because it was my choice.”

“So why bring me?”

The look he received was inscrutable, nearly bored. “We’ve discussed this, Brendol.”

“You should have left me there.”

Again, that faint scoffing laugh, hoarse and rough as if he’d spent his life smoking – and Hux knew the man had not. He’d himself whipped Hux to bleeding the one time he’d caught him with cigarettes at the age of fifteen. “If I’d left you there, they’d have torn you to shreds.” Withdrawing the cup, he took a sip, frowned briefly at the taste. “Figuratively, if not indeed literally.”

“At least then it would have been a fight.” The man had raised an eyebrow, lazy and only half-interested; Hux couldn’t stop the words even when he knew he might as well be throwing them into the void itself. “As you say: I don’t belong here. This isn’t my place. I’m crippled by my imperialist heritage and unable to move into any sphere of influence in politics, I’m forbidden to enter the military, and if I use my engineering training I can only be assigned to civilian projects.” He’d hadn’t really how his voice had raised, harsh and echoing until he all but shouted: “I’m muzzled and collared and caged, here – maybe I would have been better off dead!”

Unimpressed, Hux Sr. took a deeper sip, turned back to the table. “But you don’t believe that.” And as he settled himself back at the table Hux couldn’t suppress sudden fierce memory: the general upon his bridge, the beast-like man at his side and under his command.

And Hux Sr. had resumed his place upon his datapad, the silver-streaked head bent forward. “You like to think you could have risen as high as you’d liked, if I’d left you there.”

“A man needs to have goals.”

He glanced up, sudden, eyes piercing and cold. “Perhaps I did make a mistake in bringing you here,” he drawled, and narrowed his gaze. “Though it wasn’t mine to make.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

With a faint shake of his head, he dismissed both conversation, and his very presence. “It doesn’t matter, now.” The conversation had clearly reached its end, the man not looking up again. “Go to your little pretend job. Play at being a politician. It’s all you have, now.”

Beside the caf machine, Hux tightened his hands about the cup. Only that forced stillness could quell the urge to reach for the small knife in his boot – to walk up behind him, to fist one hand in his collar, the other in his hair. Then, he might pull hard to arch the man’s neck even as the shirt choked him half-blue. Only then would he allow them both the release of the blade, flicked open to bury deep into his throat. The man’s eyes, rolled back, would stare open in disbelief as his blood coursed over Hux’s fingers.

And he would smile, and say not a single word. The blade would have spoken more eloquently of what little remained between them now.

With hands that shook not one little bit, Hux carefully poured out the unfinished caf, rinse the cup underneath a quick spray of water. Then, he set it in the washer, and left the kitchen without another word.

Behind him Brendol Hux Sr. turned to the next page, and took another sip from his own half-filled cup.

 

*****

 

They had never been particularly talkative, as colleagues. A new tenseness had entered the small office all the same; Hux felt it as an odd crawling pressure upon his skin from the moment he entered their shared space. It seemed pointless to be surprised. Word would have travelled regarding Gillen’s planned trip and, Kylo’s ignorance aside, few of those he worked with were unaware of what his familial situation dictated about his travel abilities. Hux had certainly never been on any other offworld jaunt the Senator had taken, nor been sent fact-finding, even when he had clearly been one of those most qualified to do so.

The morning had barely begun when another staffer entered their office, announcing herself with a short rap upon the doorframe. A short woman, she barely reached the height of Hux’s lowest rib. With her long dark hair, slender of both face and body, she might have appeared childlike if not for the complex topography of her wrinkled face. Hux occasionally wondered if she were even human.

“Hux.” Her fluted voice was low, melodious; better suited to a concert hall than a political house of cards. “The Senator would like to see you now.”

With such personal summons, there was no need to dawdle. He entered her demesne for the second time that week, found her again before her circular wall of windows. In silhouette she seemed ethereal, not quite real. He paused upon the threshold, quite struck by her simple beauty.

“Hux.” And she sighed, did not look back. “Come stand with me.”

Even as he did so, her troubled expression remained turned to the city, lips curled in something very much like a frown. Hux did not need to ask to know.

“I’m sorry I cannot be of more use to you,” he said, formal and flat. Her eyes closed, face tremulous with something close to hurt.

And then she looked to him, features smooth, but eyes very dark. “Brendol,” she said, low, fierce. “We will find some way around this.”

“No.” He’d taken a step back from her without even realising it. “No, I don’t think we will.”

For the first time he could remember, something close to irritation flickered across her face. “You have never struck me as a defeatist.”

“I spoke with my father this morning.” Even as part of him flinched at the very thought of him, wishing to do no more than curl into a ball and hide deep within some dark corner, Hux went on. “He dismissed the entire suggestion out of hand.” He smiled, humourless and cold. “He should know the viability of such matters. He negotiated the original terms, after all.”

“Those terms were for him, not for you.”

“But still I must labour beneath them.” She started at the vehemence – and the venom – of the words. Hux himself took another step backward, turned his face away. “I – I am sorry, Senator. Might I be excused?”

But she only moved closer yet. Her hand came to rest light upon his shoulder. A shiver moved through him, and with it: the faintest memory of gold on grey, of the rich loam of damp earth. The sound of rain, distant upon the roof, and the sweet scent of a honeysuckle perfume.

“I want you to come with me,” she whispered, and he closed his eyes.

“Senator.” Her breath fluttered light over his skin. His face remained turned resolutely away. “Senator, _please_.”

And she sighed, drew back at last. “You are excused, Brendol.”

Blinded, blindsided both, Hux left the office at far too quick a step to keep his sense, or his breath. But he did not return to his own. Instead, he detoured into the receiving room, letting the door shut and lock behind him. There, in its centre, he stood alone. Staring. At his sides his hands, fisted, relaxed, fisted again; the endless cycle stopped only when forced together. But then, they moved again, rubbing the palms together until he felt as if the motion might very well strip the skin entirely away.

A lamp caught his eye; the golden light of it too bright, burning his retinas with fierce mockery. It was in his hand, and then against the wall before he’d even realised the motion. Even as the shattering sound echoed he dropped to the couch, head in hands, cursing himself for a fool. He would have to clean it up. Requisition it. Have it deducted from his own wages.

Beside him, his datapad trilled a received comm. He did not want to answer. There was no need to answer.

And yet, he did. “Kylo.”

“Hux.” His face upon the screen was a shifting, strange thing; for a moment, Hux entertained the fool thought that Kylo might push forward, emerging from the device and into the very room. And then Kylo shook his head, sighed. “I heard.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

For a moment, he remained quiet. Then, almost teasing, “We don’t have to _talk_.”

Through clenched teeth, he stretched out the name with elastic fury. “ _Kylo_.”

From the silence that received, even Kylo knew when he’d gone too far. But that silence proved just as infuriating; a moment later Hux struck out again, eyes too bright, fingers aching, palms prickling from their rough abuse.

“How did you even _know_?” he demanded. “How could this possibly be gossip enough to get around so quick?”

“Well, I hear things. And not in the traditional sense.”

“Are you _reading my mind_?”

Not even his tone, bordering on an outright shriek, appeared to disturb Kylo. “No.” Though his brow furrowed, and suddenly his expression turned deeply unhappy. “But you’re projecting. I could feel it. And I…” One hand rose, and for an idiot moment Hux thought that Kylo truly _would_ reach through the holo screen. That he would touch him. That he would be close and near and true. “…Hux. Don’t be angry with me. It’s just…what I am.”

Already he was deflating, hunched forward over the datapad now held between both hands. Hux wanted to be angry. He very much wanted to rant, to rave, to drive him away. But then, Kylo would go eventually, anyway. They all would. The Senate could not stay on Coruscant; the uneasy political situation would not allow for such stagnation. It would be decades before it returned, if it even did in Hux’s lifetime. Kylo’s family would go with it – and even had it not been this way, Kylo would never have stayed. Coruscant no longer held the Jedi Temple; it never would again, with such bloodied history soaked into the stones of what had become the Senate buildings. Kylo was not for one place.

 _Not for one person_.

He closed his eyes. “I’m not angry.”

“Liar.”

Opening them again, he tilted his head with a kind of weary patience he’d not felt since the first days of his transfer schooling on Coruscant. “I’m not angry with _you_ , then. Is that better?”

“Sort of.” And, wherever he was, Kylo shifted, expression still troubled. “Look, I’m not going to give you Jedi bullshit about anger being the path to the dark side or anything, but…I don’t think you should be alone.” His long throat moved in sudden convulsive swallow. “Come see me.”

“I don’t think that’s wise.”

“You don’t always have to be wise.”

“One of us has to at least try.” Making what he hoped was an admirable attempt at softening his voice, Hux added, “Thank you, Kylo. For thinking of me.”

“Hux—”

Cutting him off via holo was cowardly, and likely to be only a temporary respite. Hux tucked the datapad away in his pocket, rose. Quite aside from the mess the lamp had made, he had work to do. He already had no intention of doing any of it. The only drive, the only motivation he felt now, was only to get away.

He realised it could all be for naught. Kylo had apparently heard his distress over that distance, and for all Hux knew he’d be able to simply sense him at even greater distance, using the Force as some sort of positioning system to pinpoint his exact location.

Wordless, he gathered his things from the desk, slipping them neatly into his satchel. The watchful silence of his officemates provided all the information he required as to their knowledge of the current situation. And that silence followed him into the hall, no goodbyes tendered or accepted.

“So.” The coil of a new voice rose from his left, lazy as he considered its striking distance. “Seems as though we won’t have your company with us to Uyter after all.”

Hux did not look back. “Leave it, Chadri.”

“It’s a pity.” And of course the fool fell into step beside him, arms folded behind him in a parody of military pride. “But what use is a planet-bound lackey to a woman who can travel the galaxy entire?” And then he snorted, stopped, let Hux move forward even as he added, “Although I suppose you can stay here. Help the cause by fucking the wives of impotent businessmen and the underage children of rival senators.”

Hux turned, took two steps back, and punched him in the face. The man promptly toppled back on his ass, hitting the floor with a bone-jarring crack. His eyes were wide and white-ringed as they stared up at him over the hand pressed his nose and mouth, blood seeping between whitened fingers.

“You little _bastard_.”

Hux smiled. Then he kicked him. His highly polished boot took him high in the ribs, driving him onto his back. Howling, rolling to his side, Chadri curled around himself in fierce foetal position.

“Actually,” Hux said, quite conversational now, “my parents were very much married. Even had a stillborn before me.” Shaking out his hand, revelling in the sharp pain of knuckle and wrist, he added with thoughtful ease, “All genetic testing indicated I was very much the son of Brendol Hux and his first wife.”

Chadri’s head snapped up, voice nasal and teeth coated liberally with his own blood. “That doesn’t make you worth anything at all, you jumped up little imperial _shit_.”

Folding his hands at the small of his back, Hux took a step closer, stared down at the writhing mass upon the floor. It would be the simplest thing: to bring one boot down on his head, splattering the fine tile and panelling with blood and brain tissue.

But he did not. And Chadri rocked upward, bloody hands scrabbling for purchase upon the high polish of the floor. Their audience, gathering and silent, only grew with each passing second.

“You’ll never leave this place, Little Hux,” he rasped, eyes over bright and burning. “You’re here _forever_.”

“No.” Hux smiled. “No, I don’t believe I am.”

And then he turned, and walked away.

 

*****

 

His father had not yet left when Hux entered the kitchen the following morning. Cursing his miscalculation, Hux still proceeded forward; for all Hux Sr. had not looked up, Hux could not doubt the man knew he was there.

And he snorted as if in answer to his thoughts. “Are you not going to the office today?”

The answer came clipped, military in its flat inflection. “No.”

“You’ve ruined your only chance at success in the Senate.”

“I realise that.” He set about preparing his first morning caf, eyes fixed upon the task. “That is on me.”

“Did you at least give proper notice?”

He’d sent a holo, pre-recorded and almost stilting in its formality, though even the most finely-tuned of etiquette droids would have been pressed to find genuine fault with it. The answer had come quick, late into the previous evening. He’d watched it alone, in the darkness of his room. _I should like to discuss this in more detail, Hux. The altercation in the hallway presents difficulties of its own, but they are not insurmountable. Come speak with me, and we shall see what can be done_.

Her hope might have been infectious to a less ordered mind. No matter Nahani Gillen’s thoughts on the matter, Hux realised he was hardly going to be considered a model citizen when he attacked his own colleagues in the hallowed halls of the Senate buildings themselves. His caf, freshly brewed, already felt cold in the cradle of his hands.

And his father’s eyes, the same peculiar blue-green of his own, skewered him from across the room. “You need to find another job.” And his lip curled beneath the ordered neatness of his beard, the contempt of his voice tempered but clear enough to one attuned to its tone. “You’re not going to sit around the apartment moping on the back of your father’s own work.”

Hux’s spine held him ramrod straight, meeting his father’s gaze with the cool disconnect of a soldier born. “I wouldn’t have expected anything else.”

“Good.” He stood from the table, and despite his increasing girth, moved with a coiled strength that had Hux’s muscles trembling with the ghost of remembered ancient pain. “Have something to report by dinner, either an offer or a solid lead.”

Hux did not move for a long time after he had gone. Then, he spent far too long cleaning away the evidence of his caf, tidying the kitchen itself until every surface shone, and his nasal cavity burned with the scent of cleanser and chlorine. He had been alone for some time before he had actually convinced himself of that truth.

There were things he might do; at the very least he should set about tidying his datapad, now a mess of broken links and misnamed folders, given that his security clearances had been revoked. Once that had been done, there were contacts there he ought to evoke. People he knew who might offer some work in the private sector. Including Lady Bulenwa.

Even the mere thought of her name invoked a lazy churn of his stomach. Kylo’s arms had been so strong as they’d moved across the dance floor together, that feral light burning bright in his eyes as he’d glared across the room at the woman. What he’d seen in her mind, Hux had no way of knowing – and even less chance of understanding why it had disturbed him so. In reality, he and Bulenwa rarely even undressed. Hux instead pleasured her with mouth and fingers, and only occasionally his cock. The experience tended to be degrading for him only by what it represented in his own mind.

He could watch holodramas like some house-bound life partner, or go walking. Intellectually he recognised it would be better to seek out his contacts in person. But standing upon the balcony, another cold caf in hand, he looked over the city and did not move. The arterial flow of the main air corridors, the smaller feeders branching off: both formed the city’s great cardiovascular system, breathing and bleeding alike.

His holopad rested upon the wide balustrade, scrolling with the usual chatter of news both local and galactic. He paid it little heed until it began to sing. With a scowl and a sip, Hux glared at it until the chiming timed out, stopped. It started again almost immediately. Four times this happened, and then a message appeared.

I KNOW YOU’RE THERE. STOP STARING AND PICK UP.

With a sigh, Hux put the empty cup aside, and didn’t wait for the fifth. Thumbing his contact, Hux called Kylo instead.

The younger man answered with no preamble, and certainly no apology. “You should come down to the docks.”

Hux glanced over to the sky, scowled. “Why?”

“Because.”

“I don’t want to.”

And Kylo scoffed, something ugly in his expression now – though Hux did not garner the impression it was directed at him. “You haven’t got anything better to do with your time,” he snapped, and then almost immediately turned wheedling. “Hux. Please come.”

Such mood swings could only make him tired. But then, Hux was already so weary it scarcely seemed to matter anymore. “Why the docks?”

“I want to show you something.” On the screen, his eyes flicked sideways, fixed upon something well beyond Hux’s point of view. “You’re into engineering. You’ll like it.”

Already he was eyeing the empty cup again. “I suppose I’ll have to.”

“You don’t need to work for Gillen to be happy, Hux.”

He closed his eyes now, not daring to meet Kylo’s own. “Just…shut up, Kylo. I’m coming, all right?”

He took a transport shuttle to the far side of the sector. It was almost empty, occupied by only himself and two other people who barely looked to him. Hux spent the journey gazing out over the city, his usual faint distaste for the place now bitter and burning upon his tongue, as if he wished to scream ugly thoughts aloud where others might at last hear the truth of it.

And yet, beneath that he could feel the faint memory of their strange meeting. In fact he’d heard very little about it, in the days that had passed since he and Kylo had first met. It had some apparent malfunction, a series of events beginning from a faulty maintenance task that had combined at last into the accident that could have killed him. Even now he had to chuckle bitterly at how such a contrived circumstance, random and rare, could bring his life into such ruin.

He disembarked at a transport tower half a block from the dock number Kylo had given, sharing the elevator down with a Mon Calamari family who left him feeling faintly slimy even when they stood on opposite ends of a generous carriage. Kylo waited on the corner, slouched with hands shoved deep into the pockets of his long coat. He glanced up with disinterest as Hux drew close, then flicked his eyes away. The doubletake he then performed very nearly made Hux smile.

“What are you staring at _now_?” he asked, and for a long moment Kylo continued to do nothing but that. Then, throat working, he shook his head as if to clear it, and seemed not to succeed.

“I’ve never…that’s a good look for you.”

“What?” Hux wrinkled his nose, looked down. “ _Scruffy_?”

“Well, scruffy for _you_.” His hand reached out. “Did you even brush your hair?”

Hus ducked away, outright scowling even as a faint blush fought its way to his cheeks. “Kylo,” he warned, and even though Kylo did drop his hand, his eyes were too wide still, as if he thought to swallow Hux whole with them.

“No. I like it.” His voice had an odd strain as he added, almost soft, “It suits you.”

Never had Hux regretted more the idea to go out in public in pure civvies. “One day unemployed, and I’m already a ruffian.” Kylo was already opening his mouth to say something no doubt downright annoying, and so Hux said a beat quicker, “What is it you wanted to show me?”

From the expression on his face, Kylo wanted to talk more about Hux’s plain coat, baggy trousers, bright scarf. Then he rolled his eyes and gave up. “You’ll have to come inside.” Still, his eyes lingered on the trousers, in particular. “Is it really that bad?”

“I was coming down to the docks, Kylo. I didn’t think that involved full formal dress.”

“Yeah, but…” Though he looked forward, his voice had turned distinctly odd. “…Hux.”

“What?”

“It’ll work out.”

The urge to stick out a foot, to trip the idiot and send him sprawling, ate at his resolve like mineral acid. “No. No Force nonsense. Not today.”

Though he sighed, Kylo did choose not to argue, leading them in silence through the corridors of the port facility. As they passed people on all sides, Hux felt abruptly glad he hadn’t taken his usual time about clothing or appearance. Nothing about the setting could be termed rough, exactly, but these were not the neat and orderly corridors of the main transport hubs. He’d at least correctly assumed Kylo would call him to the shipping end, being that his father was a cargo pilot who indulged more in smuggling than anything else.

They’d been walking for perhaps ten minutes when Kylo pulled up short before a docking bay. A small girl leaned against a wall, bouncing a ball against the one opposite. She never caught it; rather, she would raise a hand, arresting the little red thing in midair. With a flick of her fingers, she then propelled it back again, setting off the whole cycle a second time.

As if sensing their approach, this time she snatched the ball from the air, eyes bright as she looked to him. “Hux!” she called. “I’ve got a present for you!”

Kylo immediately scowled. “We both do. And it was my idea.”

Hux ignored him completely, stepped closer to Rey even as he pushed his hands deep into his pockets. He didn’t even know why they were cold. “What do you mean?”

With both hands about the ball, held tight against her chest, she beamed up at him. “I heard you were sad. Because they wouldn’t let you go to Uyter.” One little hand thrust out to the side, pointed directly at the closed interior blast doors. “So, you can fly with us!”

“What?”

Under the penetrating gaze, Kylo half-wilted; still, he managed to meet Hux’s eyes even as his own turned oddly liquid, like a pet chastised. “You haven’t flown since you got here. Well, except on the shuttles.” Shuffling his feet, he nodded to the doors himself. “We can fly you.”

“Kylo.” His headache warred with the urge to laugh, both sensations perfectly and painfully inconvenient. “I can’t go to Uyter.”

“We’re not going to Uyter.” This was said almost too quick; his eyes flicked sideways, returned as his voice tightened, even as he attempted something that might have passed for a smile. “It’s just…a flight. Around Coruscant.”

Already his body had half-turned, inclined towards the way he had come. “This isn’t a good idea.”

But Kylo had already come too close, eyes intense, all shame or uncertainty now quite evaporated. “Hux. Please.” And Hux could feel Rey’s enthralled gaze upon them both; he attempted to step backward, felt Kylo’s hand close tight about his wrist. Bruisingly so. Right where his counterpart had worn his general’s stripes. “Let me do this for you.” He bit his lip, eyes searching, breath so close and so very warm. “I know you miss it.”

Hux closed his eyes, so very tired. “Kylo. No.”

“So, kids – are we ready yet?” Hux’s eyes snapped open, even as Kylo cursed under his breath and took a step backward. Before them stood a man, closer in age to Hux than Kylo, dressed in a trader’s casual garb with a colourful jacket slung over one shoulder. And his eyes, dark and bright in swarthy features, opened appreciatively as they raked over Hux himself. “Why, hello there. You must be the one I’ve been waiting for all this time.”

Kylo spoke through gritted teeth. “Hux, this is Poe Dameron.” And then, as if those teeth were now being pulled sans anaesthetic, “He’s a pilot.”

“ _Benny_!” The man – Dameron – enveloped him in a great hug, then turned, one arm still slung about his shoulder as he shook him with clear delight. “You didn’t tell me your guest was smoking hot!”

“He’s also an asshole.” Shaking himself free, he added, not quite sotto voce, “Just…don’t. All right?”

“Benny, you’re far too possessive,” he replied, eyes already upon Hux instead. His hand was warm, the grip callused and firm, as he took his hand and shook it. “Hux, right?”

“You can’t have him.”

Dameron snorted, turned back – though not before dropping Hux a clear wink. “Well, the thing is, Benny – I’m just not sure that you’re mature enough for a relationship with an older man.” All his usual composure quite fled, Hux choked; Dameron actually laughed outright this time. “Perhaps I’d better look after him in the meantime, yeah? Until you’re old enough to buy your own alcohol, at least?”

“ _Poe_.”

“Yes, Benny?”

“I’m going to kill you.”

Even as Rey smacked her cousin’s thigh, very hard if the wince on Kylo’s face was anything to go by, Dameron only laughed. “Promises, promises,” he sang, and leaned down to swing a grinning Rey up to his shoulder. “Besides, you need a pilot. And BB-8’s already plugged into the navcom.”

“I can fly this thing!”

One thick eyebrow arched high. “Says the boy who hasn’t flown so much as a kite since he was nine.”

The scowl upon Kylo’s face had Hux throwing him an interested look, and he raised a forbidding hand. “Don’t even think about it, Hux.”

“Why? I’m curious.”

“ _No_.”

“Don’t worry.” Dameron leaned close, his rich voice bright in its staged whisper. “I’ll tell you everything later.”

Rey, queenly upon her perch, broke the spell. “Can we just _go_ , already?”

Surprisingly, the two immediately surrendered their bickering to her superior suggestion. Moving into the docking bay, they entered the shuttle together. It proved a surprisingly spacious thing; while it could handle long-distance hops between planet systems given the more than functional hyperdrive installed beneath its engine, it had clearly been designed primarily for sub-atmospheric journeys about a planet’s surface. Hux took odd comfort in that even as he took a seat near one of the viewport bays, and could not be entirely sure why that was.

Rey immediately bounced into a seat on his left, beamed up at him with a child’s easy sense of clever achievement. He spared her a genuine smile in return, though some of it had to do with her cousin. He couldn’t be anything but grateful that Kylo had apparently decided to stay up the front, where he might bicker with Poe far more easily from the co-pilot’s seat.

Rey leaned suddenly close, her clean small face alight with mischief. “I’m excited,” she announced, and tilted her head with a devilish glee. “How about you?”

“I am too, yes.” And he couldn’t help but be somewhat surprised to find he meant it. “Do you fly much?”

“Yep!” Already buckled firmly in her seat, Rey leaned back, closed her eyes in blissful anticipation. “Uncle Han likes to teach me about the different shuttles and transports and freighters he uses in his work. And I’ve already memorised all the structure prints to the _Falcon_.”

“Have you flown it?”

Her bright laughter beat against his ears, too high-pitched to be comfortable. And yet he could not regret being the source of it. “No! I’m way too small.” Then, her amusement solidified to clear resolve. “But I will. Uncle Han _promised_.”

With her lower lip pressed out in determination, he could see a clear resemblance not only to Kylo, but to Leia Organa herself. Stubbornness was clearly a dominant familial trait. Settling back into the seat, Hux allowed her chatter to wash over him as the distant hum of the engines began to grow louder. The clank of the releasing clamps turned his stomach over, his hands tight about the arms of his chair. It eased forward from the bay, into the great corridors of the ports, and turned towards the exit.

But even as they moved out, the city shrinking beneath them, Hux began to frown. The angle of their ascent was too steep. Leaning forward, already making faint calculation, Hux grew only more certain of it; their acceleration quickened, far too much so. Poe had not struck him as incompetent. And nothing about this particular manoeuvre struck him as incorrect, save for the very fact they were performing it at all.

“What are you doing?”

With belt undone, Hux stood; Rey’s hand caught his sleeve, but he shook it aside, eyes fixed upon the front as he stumbled forward. Kylo glanced backward, eyes widening.

“Hux. Sit down!”

He didn’t. The entire ship shuddered as it broke atmosphere, though Hux did not fall. His knuckles whitened upon the seat backs either side as he held position, glaring furious to the front. And then, as the sky darkened to sharp black, the ship slipping into its designated exit lane, he stormed forward.

“Kylo.” He took him by the collar, dragged him as far as he could considering Kylo was actually strapped in. “What the _fuck_ are you doing?”

A squeal of “ _Language_!” rose up from behind them, both delighted and distraught. Hux did not spare any of his fierce focused attention, not even for Rey. Kylo himself twisted back around, staring looking resolutely ahead. Hux snarled, the urge to fist his hand in his hair and yank his head around contained only by the venom with which he gritted out the next words.

“If you do not answer me right now I am going take your balls and shove them one by one down into your throat, and then I’m going to punch you there until you choke on them both.”

“ _Hux_!” That earned him Kylo’s attention, mouth hanging upon and mouth very wide. “What the _hell_?”

From his right, a low whistle emerged, even as Dameron continued to operate his ship with a fluid ease of one born to it. “Benny,” he said, and sounded almost resigned. “Did you not _tell him_ where we were going?”

“He said we were going around Coruscant!”

Dameron blinked, then groaned. “ _Benny_!”

But the man’s clear amusement only fed the burning flame of Hux’s own fury. He leaned close to Dameron, hissing into his ear. “I’m not cleared to leave Coruscanti airspace. At all.” At the pilot’s startled look, Hux pursed his lips to the point they near-vanished. “This is illegal.”

Craning around Hux, Dameron frowned deeper yet. “Benny, is this true?”

Slouched now in the co-pilot’s chair, Kylo crossed his arms over his chest, stared into the airspace of Coruscant, and the opened lane before them. “It doesn’t matter. Go to lightspeed.”

“Yes, it very much matters.” Hux had no idea how to pilot a ship, but already he was reaching for the nearest control panel. “Take me back. Take me back _now_.”

Dameron’s hand caught his, almost absent-mindedly; it was warm, gentle as it pushed him away. And his eyes remained fixed upon the navcom readout, expression troubled. “Oh for – we’re in trouble no matter what we do.” He reached for the switch. “Let’s go.”

“I – _what_?!”

Before he could reach out strong hands closed on him, propelling him back and out of the cockpit. The strength of him stole his breath in all the wrong ways, was enough for Kylo to take the upper hand as he pushed Hux down into the nearest seat.

“No,” Kylo said, harsh and quick. “Leave Poe out of this. I didn’t tell him what I was doing with you, and it’s not his fault.” Then, voice rising, “And you’re not going to crash this ship just because you’re angry at _me_!”

“Crash?” A small voice trembled from their left, low and uncertain. “Are we going to crash, Benny?”

And even as the ship made the jump, Hux’s entire body shuddering with the ancient memory of it, Kylo shook his head. “No, Rey.” But his eyes never left his own. “Are we, Hux?”

When he looked away, he found only Rey. The small body trembled, her eyes rich with something between demand and fear. “What’s going on?”

She was just eight years old, but he could clearly see she had no intention of taking _that_ as an answer. “I’m sorry, Rey,” he said, and very nearly meant it. “It’s just that I need to kill your cousin.”

“No!” She threw her arms around his nearest leg, even as Kylo rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “You can’t kill Benny! I like him!”

“Well, I like him too,” Hux replied, all practicality. “But he’d still benefit from a good killing.”

Kylo went very still. “You like me?”

“This is better than my mother’s favourite holodramas, you know that, right?”

Even with the laughter from the cockpit, Hux didn’t look away from Rey. “Eyes on the front, Dameron.”

“Benny, your boyfriend is bossy.”

And now he looked up, with all the easy command of a ruler upon his throne. “Kylo,” he said, “You will take me back to Coruscant.”

And above him, Hux could see nothing of the occasional uncertainty Kylo sometimes wore – nothing of the little rich boy lost. Instead he became something closer to that hulking masked figure in black and silver, his eyes cold and decided as he folded his arms over his broad chest, and shook his head.

“No. I won’t.”

And Hux leaned forward, knuckles white upon the back of his chair, knowing that his eyes snapped with blue fire. “That wasn’t optional.”

“I know it wasn’t.” And he leaned forward, so that those black eyes seemed to fill the world.

Seated as he was, he could do nothing more move back into his seat. Rey’s wide eyes were fixed upon them both, leaving him with the ridiculous urge to shout _not in front of the children!_ “You can’t mind trick me,” he snarled instead. “You said so yourself.”

“Yes.” Now he leaned over him entire, far too close indeed. “But I also said there were other things I could do. If I didn’t mind you noticing.”

“ _I_ mind!”

“Well.” Kylo might have even sounded apologetic, if not for the fact he now also grinned like a lunatic. “That’s unfortunate.”

The bloom of pain curdled a scream in his throat, too quick to be voiced. After that, he had only silence. And darkness.

Hux still hated him.

 

*****

 

_When the general looks up from his work, it is to find the dark man before him. There had been no announcement of his arrival; he had not received word via his datapad of the docking of his shuttle, let alone so much as a knock upon his door._

_But the general blinks only once, returns his eyes to the reports that scroll endless before him on the multiple displays of his personal workstation._

_“What is it, Ren?” And, when there is no reply: “You are excused. I have work to attend to.”_

_This earns him but silence in return. But a resonant energy upon the air speaks of all that Ren will not say. Hux can see through the general’s mind that Ren is recently returned from a mission – and that he is always this way, when he has taken a kill._

_“Ren?”_

_He takes one step forward. “Let me.” His voice rasps even through the vocal modulator, somehow made sharp and static. “General. Allow me this.”_

_The general flicks to another screen, lips held pursed and firm. “I am busy.”_

_“I am yours.”_

_That only makes him snort, low and quick. “I already know that.” But it has disturbed him; though his eyes still pass over his work, the general reads nothing of it, takes in no information. With another snort, this one louder and far more irritated, the general flicks his stylus to one side, the smooth thing rolling to a halt just at the edge of his desk. “Oh, very well. But don’t be slow about it. And leave all your clothing by the door. I can smell the blood from over here.”_

_Ren can be quick to obey, when it is his want – when it is the general’s will. From behind these borrowed eyes Hux watches Ren disrobe with a shameful concentration. The beauty of him is an undeniable thing; the body richly muscled and hard in tone, the movements elegant and wild both._

_The general leans back, turning his chair at Ren’s approach. The dark eyes fix upon him with predatory pleasure, his cock already half-hard between the hard muscle of his thighs. In answer the general allows his legs to lazily part, yearns suddenly for a cigarette. In answer, a drawer opens to his left, the half-filled packet once tucked in there rising, gliding silent to fall to the desk beside his hand._

_The general glances down, expression only mild. “A lovely trick.”_

_Before him, Ren goes down on his knees; the long body traces a pale strong silhouette against the dark carpet. “Isn’t it, though.”_

_With a faint smirk the general strips off his gloves, removes a cigarette from amongst its fellows. When it rests between his lips, he quirks a wordless eyebrow. Ren’s eyes have already focused upon it; they flare brief and sudden gold, and Hux can taste something strange and sulphurous, the barometric pressure sudden and hard against his chest._

_And the tip of the cigarette sparks to sudden life even as the general breathes deep. It strikes Hux that logically one ought to be afraid of a creature that can create fire with nothing more than a tilted twisted thought. But the general takes the cigarette from between his lips with a languid chuckle, exhaling the smoke in low plume directed down._

_Eyes open, body held perfectly still, Ren blinks not at all as it moves over him in sweet-scented wave._

_“Well?” The general waves his hand in lazy downward arc, the brief scattering of ash a careless indulgence he would never permit otherwise. “Proceed.”_

_Long fingers rise to unbuckle the belt, slipping it away before undoing the jacket beneath, spreading its edges wide open. Hux had expected him to just coax the half-hard cock out, to set to his work with no further ado. But the general only smiles as Ren rucks up jacket and shirt and undershirt, baring the lean abdomen to the cool ambient air of his own office. His neatly-pressed trousers receive a similar treatment; one hand moves beneath his buttocks, the pressure of palm and fingertip shifting his hips upward so the other hand might coax the material down to mid-thigh. There, with the general half on display, Ren appears satisfied. Positioned between his knees, hands curled now about his calves, Ren leans forward and takes him into his mouth._

_A gasping breath escapes, and a moment later the general takes in a lungful of smoke as he chokes on something that feels dangerously close to laughter. His heavy-lidded eyes slip closed, though only for a moment. When he glances down, it is with his lips curved to possessive smirk._

_The tangle of dark hair moves in slow pulse; Ren has already swallowed him deep. As Hux watches through the general’s lazy gaze, Ren draws back in an arching slide; the slick of saliva glistens silver-bright over the flushed skin of his hard cock. A kiss is pressed to the tip, then Ren draws ever further backward; the string of pre-come chases his pursed lips, a pearly thread stretched between cockhead and mouth. The quick tongue flicks out, catching it, taking it deep. Between those hard thighs his own flushed cock is a twitching desperate thing – yet when Ren glances upward, the smirk he wears is triumphant, brilliant in its sly victory._

_The general crushes out the cigarette on the gleaming durasteel of his desk. “Get on with it.”_

_One great hand has moved to his hip, now; the fingertips press hard enough to bruise, purple-black pearls strung across the pale canvas of his skin. And the general, wreathed in smoke, watches wordless from above as Ren goes about his work. Lips, and tongue: and beneath both, the faintest hint of teeth._

_Hus finds the experience underlain with strange sensation. In a manner of speaking, it is as if he floats, unanchored and weightless. It has little in common with the previous dream, where Ren’s power had separated his body from the very concept of gravity. In this, it is though his spirit itself is bared, his body opened, his mind emptied. There had been no illicit ingredient in the cigarette, so far as Hux can ascertain; the general seems drunk instead on the power of this encounter alone. But then, perhaps it is not so strange. He has Kylo Ren before him, on his knees and between his thighs, dripping cock deep in his mouth. The scent of blood and sweat and death lingers fresh upon his skin, and yet this man is at his sole command._

_With even these drifting thoughts, the general has come so close. With hands now curled about the arms of the chair, he begins a low jerk of hips, abdomen drawn taut, neck arching, mouth half-opened to gasp at oxygen that never seems quite enough for words he cannot speak aloud._

_Then: pressure, at the base of his cock. Ren’s hands tighten on his thighs, mouth pressed upon the tip. But the devilish smile says all that the general and Hux need to know. His own hand jerks over to his head, fingers tangled tight in the dark hair as he yanks at the scalp._

_“Let me come, you horrid little beast.”_

_The reply is soundless, spoken instead to his mind._ But I’m enjoying this _. And still he smiles around the cock held yet between taut lips._

_The general snorts, leaning back, hips tilting forward to force his cock deeper yet. “I assumed as much. You can’t even take your mouth off me long enough to speak like a civilised person.”_

_Ren is already returned to his work; it appears he had not lied about the pleasure he takes, for his enthusiasm trembles through him like endless earthshock. And the silence between them can never be entirely that; his ragged breathing, smoke-riddled and panting, moves in counterpoint to the slick sounds of Ren’s mouth. Taking him forward, pushing him back – it seems endless, holding him prisoner, keeping him close._

_The general comes sudden, unexpected. Ren draws back at the penultimate of moments, the general’s release arching, coming to fall on extended tongue and opened lips. And as the general shudders, shifts, Ren’s fingers rise, smearing, tongue darting out to lick in long strokes. Hazed and drowsy, the general only watches, lips twitching about his languid amusement._

_And then Ren is rising, sticky hands pressed to the general’s thighs, their crotches pressed hard together as his face hovers but a moment from his own. “Hux.”_

_And Hux trembles to hear the name upon this monster’s lips, even as the general only tilts his head, tone bored and easy. “Yes, Ren?”_

_The dark eyes are searching, demanding – but beneath them, a plea. “I will make you emperor.”_

_“No.” The general’s hand rises, strokes at Ren’s cheek as if he were a felinx he had a mind to pet. “No, I will make_ myself _emperor.” And he leans close, their lips moving in the parody of a kiss as he adds, “But I will do it with you by my side.”_

_The hands come tight about his back; the general’s legs wind about his hips as Ren breathes fierce into his mouth. “And I will never leave you.”_

_“Why would you want to?”_

_His laughter is taken entirely by the ravenous kiss that Ren demands of him now. And the general does not care. He has what he wants. What he has always wanted._

 

*****

 

“Hux?”

The body-deep ache held him far closer to sleep, and still the insistent voice dragged him relentlessly towards waking. Grimacing, refusing yet to open his eyes, Hux tightened his hands about his safety harness and gritted his teeth almost to grinding. “I’m going to _kill_ you, Kylo.”

Long moments later, he could stop squinting, able to bear the bright light long enough to actually open his eyes properly. As they adjusted he found Kylo kneeling beside him, stupid curious face far too close for comfort. He’d at least had the grace to transfer him to one of the bunks at the back of the shuttle, the small berths separated from the main body by firm durasteel. Hux doubted it would be thick enough to hide the screams if he tried to eviscerate Kylo with his teeth, all the same.

And Kylo blinked, very rapidly. “You know,” he said, and he drew his lower lip in between his teeth, head tilted. “If it would make you feel any better, I could…”

“Shut up.”

Kylo looked quite put out; it lent him a childish air that didn’t make Hux want to punch him any less. “You were _enjoying_ that dream.” And he leaned closer, voice pitched persuasively low even as Hux leaned steadfastly away. “I could do that. For you. Now.”

Hiking up one foot, Hux caught him low in the gut, pushed him until he overbalanced onto his ass. “Get out.”

Now on his knees, Kylo pressed himself upward, scowling as he pushed a hand back through the standard ruin of his hair. “Why are you so…prudish?” Folding his arms over his chest, the thin material of his shirt pulled tight over the musculature beneath, he went right back to pouting. “It can’t be my age. Not really. I’m almost eighteen.”

With a wince Hux loosened the restraints and levered himself upward, twisted so that his feet were upon the firm promise of the floor beneath. “That _almost_ is a larger deterrent than you realise.”

“Why?” Even as Hux steadfastly ignored him, he could feel the crawl of Kylo’s eyes upon his skin. “It’s inevitable. We’re going to fuck each other, and we’re both going to like it. So why don’t we just do it?”

Turning from where he’d managed to locate his boots, Hux let out an incredulous bark of laughter. “Because I’m not a slave to a mystical Force I don’t even believe in!”

The affront upon his face almost made Hux pity him. “You don’t _have_ to believe in it!”

From the spiralling volume of both of their voices, Hux knew they could indulge in a decent shouting match – their first, and a luxury he didn’t often allow himself besides. He scowled instead at sudden revelation of what Kylo’s offer actually implied. “How could we be dreaming the same dream when you weren’t even asleep?”

Almost immediately his eyes skipped sideways, the guilty tell of a child with a hand firmly caught in the sweetie jar. “Oh, I was just watching that one.”

“Do you genuinely have no concept of personal boundaries, or are you actually just that stupid?”

Kylo appeared to give his answer some thought before concluding, “Both, probably.”

He didn’t bother catching the explosive sigh, pulling very hard at the laces of his boots. “And honest, at least,” he muttered, letting his foot fall again with a heavy thump. “Where’s Rey?”

“Sleeping.” And he smiled at Hux’s horrified look. “Not in here. She’s actually curled up in the cockpit, with Poe. She’s convinced he’s taught her enough that she can land us herself.”

The idea of it set his stomach to churning. Carefully he turned his head, saw the hyper-speed smear of stars lining the space beyond thick transparisteel. “How long was I out?”

“A little while.” Pushing himself to his feet, Kylo tugged at his trousers, and then gave a long stretch. It hiked up his shirt, revealed the taut pull of muscled skin beneath. Hux turned back to the window even as he added, “It’ll be a few more hours, before we get there.”

He kept any further thoughts on that to himself, even as it struck him that he really needed to visit the ‘fresher. But he refused to make any move while Kylo lurked yet behind him.

And perhaps Kylo sensed his thoughts even without reading them; clear exasperation lined the word, deep and aching. “ _Hux_.”

He still didn’t turn from the window. “I really don’t want to talk to you.”

“Fine.” The indistinct sound of rummaging underlay his next words. “We could play dejarik. We don’t need to talk for that.”

True as that was, Hux could name offhand a dozen other ways in which he might distract himself. But no matter how hard he might work at distraction, he knew he still would feel the urge to beat Kylo half to death. At least with the board and its holo figures, he’d have a way of doing something close to it without scarring Kylo’s impressionable small cousin for life.

When it came to landing, Dameron glided the shuttle in with an ease that could have been terrifying, if one focused on the amount of chatter and not looking at his instruments that he indulged in the whole time – and the fact that he did, indeed, allow Rey to co-pilot him. At Hux’s pale expression Kylo had muttered something about the seat being keyed to the astromech in the pod up back. But even Rey’s clear joy couldn’t make him quite enjoy it, for all his heart ached to see the galaxy from the outside, again.

They’d come into orbit about a moon, three others in various position about the parent planet; he knew their destination even before he stepped from the shuttle. There, at the terminus of the boarding ramp, he paused, breathed deep of the air of a new planet. The rich scent of tree and loam tasted fresh upon his tongue; the wind slid gentle through the trees, loud avian chorus accompanying its motion. The air felt heavy with moisture, warm against his skin; humid, but not with the inherent chill he’d known as a child.

“It’s pretty. Isn’t it.” And then, sly, even as he fished always for approval, “Better than Arkanis, I’m sure.”

“Kylo.”

Throwing his hands up, he added a dramatic sigh for emphasis. “Fine. I’ll shut up.” Then, a second later: “This is Yavin 4.”

Dry as desert dust, he shielded his eyes, squinted up at the empty sky. “Did you think I didn’t realise?”

“Well. Just in case.”

But even as Kylo slipped into one of his celebrated sulks, Dameron emerged from the shuttle with Rey in tow, a BB droid trundling cheerfully along behind them. “Home, sweet home,” he announced, and then, at Hux’s surprised glance, “Well, not this part, precisely. Can’t say we came over here much.”

 _Here_ : a Jedi temple. Or what Hux presumed was one. It was of course older than the school set up here, but that did not surprise him; from what little Hux understood, the purge ordered by Palpatine could never have been as absolute as he might have wished for. Jedi temples remained scattered throughout the galaxy, if one only knew where to look for them.

But even that ziggurat of weathered stone and climbing vine did not cause his unease. Rather, the disconnect came from a history far newer. Of knowing that in the skies above this moon, the fall of the old Empire had begun. As Hux stared upward now, he could gaze back and summon a thousand stories, watched and read and remembered. Could allow the skies, clear and quiet now, to convey him headfirst back into history.

“Hux?” Kylo’s hand lay warm upon his shoulder, voice faintly troubled. “Come on. We need to go see my uncle.”

Only the three of them shouldered several bags, turned to the path; Poe remained behind, left to attend to the shuttle as his little mech chattered happily at his side, apparently delighted to be released from the navigation pod. From something he’d said, Hux suspected he had family to see in one of the other settlements.

They heard voices before they saw them; they emerged from dense foliage into a broad courtyard with high stone walls, the ziggurat towering high even at its distance. A dozen children of varying ages moved about their forms, wooden practice swords in hand. Offset to the north, a single figure stood alone, dressed in grey and white, very much like his shaggy hair. Bearded, face weather-lined and still, he watched the children with his hands folded into the long sleeves of his robe. He had nothing of the height of his nephew; Hux was reminded far more of his sister instead.

“We should let him finish the lesson.”

Craning his neck back, Hux blinked. “That’s very respectful of you, Kylo.”

“Not really, I’m just not in the mood for a tongue lashing.” One hand rose, passed over his forehead; a thin sheen of sweat had already beaded there. “I’ve had enough of that today from you alone.”

Hux, who himself wanted nothing so much as to shrug out of his outer coat, narrowed his eyes. “Do you honestly think you didn’t deserve it?”

“See, you’re doing it again.”

Rey sniggered, gave her cousin a shove that actually knocked him half off balance. “Yeah, but you really _did_ deserve it, Benny.”

And Kylo only stopped glaring death at her when Hux sighed, clipped his shin with the edge of one boot. With that glare now turned on him, he huffed, tilted his head to the lesson. “Fine. Come on, let’s go talk to him.”

Crossing the courtyard, keeping to its western edge, Hux noted the way the man inclined himself just enough to watch their approach. When they drew up before him Kylo actually sketched out a bow, the gesture oddly formal in the warm air of the jungle. Hux felt the urge to do the same, ignored it. Rey chose her own path, leaping forward to wrap skinny little arms around his legs even as she beamed up at him with brilliant love. A faint longing could be glimpsed for but a brief moment before it flickered out, the older man’s hand moving in gentle stroke upon her small head.

“It’s been a long time,” he said, voice the low tumble of gravel over stone; she grinned at him, pressing her head into his touch.

“I know. I’m glad to be back.” Then, impossibly, she grinned even wider. “And Benny brought his boyfriend!”

Kylo’s lips tightened, eyes very dark as he stared down at his small cousin. “I really, really am going to kill you.”

He spoke only mildly, but it was the kind of warning that could halt a bantha mid-charge. “Ben.”

“I – sorry. Master Luke.”

“It’s okay, Uncle Luke,” Rey chirruped from where she still held to his legs, tight as any ysalamir. “With the mood he’s in, Benny’s going to kill _everyone_.”

Rolling his eyes now, the man turned to Hux, one eyebrow arched in a way that Hux had now seen upon Kylo, Leia, and now Luke himself. “You must be Brendol,” he said, and he nodded, did not hold out a hand.

“I prefer Hux.” At the unblinking stare this earned, he added, unnecessary, “You’re Luke Skywalker.”

“So I am.” Turning to give Kylo another inscrutable look, he inclined his head to the children, whose forms had become all the sloppier for the realisation they were not being watched. “Let me dismiss the lesson, yes?”

The two of them stood wordless together as Rey trailed him to where he gathered the children around him. The soothing rise and fall of his low voice reminded him of the sea, not seen since his last days upon Arkanis. He didn’t know if Yavin 4 had any ocean of its own.

When he returned, Hux could not help but notice that Luke Skywalker’s eyes were the colour of troubled waters. “You and I,” he said, no preamble at all. “We should talk.”

“Yeah, we should.”

Skywalker never once removed his gaze from Hux. “I didn’t say anything about you, Ben.”

“But—”

“You know the chores of the temple.” The smile he turned upon his nephew was very nearly sweet, if not for the durasteel of his eyes. “Perhaps you could go help the others with them. Dinner will need prepared, too.”

“Why can’t I stay with Hux?”

Not even Kylo’s sulky whine could change Skywalker’s expression one iota. “I didn’t realise I was expected to justify my every decision to you, Ben.”

By comparison, Kylo’s expressive features ran the gamut from annoyance to frustration to fear to petulance in a swift-shifting kaleidoscope. “But I brought him here!”

“Ben.”

With one word alone, Skywalker had him – though, from the mutinous tone of his words, Hux had to suspect Skywalker had added something through the mental bond Jedi apparently abused at will. “Yes, Master.”

But he couldn’t begrudge Skywalker the effectiveness as they watched him go. “It’s almost a relief,” Hux remarked, sudden. “To know that I’m not the only person he doesn’t listen to.”

“Oh, Ben’s always been that way.” And the lopsided smile he permitted himself then, if only for a moment, made him resemble Kylo so strikingly that Hux nearly needed to take a step backwards. “Would you like some tea, Hux?”

At least his voice trembled only a little when he said, “It would be appreciated.”

The low temple buildings buzzed with life, the students clearly set about the duties of clearing up after the day, and preparing their evening meal. Hux caught the briefest glimpse of Kylo levering Rey up onto one of the flat rooves before deciding he didn’t even want to know.

Luke lead him to a small chamber, indicated he should enter first. It proved nothing particularly luxurious, nor individualised at that, but still Hux caught a sense that it was his own: that of a master. The woven mats upon the raised floor were worn, but well-made; removing his shoes, he paused as Skywalker seated himself cross-legged before a low table. A brazier burned at its hollow centre, a heavy lidded kettle suspended over its middle.

As Hux settled himself to similar position, Skywalker reached between them, poking briefly at the kettle. “What did Ben tell you about why he brought you here?”

Hux countered easily, but the words were flat. “What did he tell _you_?”

“He didn’t need to tell me anything.” Leaning back now, Skywalker began to shift the two cups upon the tray before him; each held a small quantity of leaves, their scent bitter upon the air as he looked up, said simply, “I asked him to do it.”

Some part of him wanted to reflexively smile. Most of him just wanted to scream. Hux did neither. “He didn’t tell me that.”

“Well, he probably would have done it anyway.” Wry again, he reached for the kettle, began to pour the water with the ease of long practice. “He’s a Skywalker. Believe you me, I know exactly what we’re likely to do in most given situations.”

Hux did not speak again until he held the cup between his palms; too hot to drink, it just barely did not burn his palms. “That doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“It wasn’t actually supposed to.”

Careful now, Hux set the cup down before him, untouched. “You do realise I’m stuck here?” Skywalker took a sip, eyes fixed on his over the rim; Hux’s hands curled to fists, even as his voice remained the easy diplomatic tone he’d found so useful in his work. “Or at the very least, if you allow me to return to Coruscant, I’m likely to be detained in some shape or fashion?” Only then did the bitterness enter. “Or are you only concerned with my status so long as I’m useful to you?”

Skywalker made a peculiar little noise, into his cup; Hux could not tell if it was a laugh or a snort, even as he set it aside. “Do you honestly think Ben’s likely to give you up?”

His tone was richly glacial. “You’re the Skywalker.”

From his little shrug, even Skywalker himself knew better than to argue the point. “He told me about your dreams,” he said instead, and Hux couldn’t hide the reflexive wince.

“I do hope he didn’t regale you with endless detail.”

“I had the impression he’d…edited them, for general audiences.” And that really _was_ a laugh, stifled as it was; the brightness of those blue eyes was enough to betray him. “But I can imagine what he left out.”

Hux stared into his untouched tea, watching the leaves dance in endless spiral vortex. “Please don’t.”

“Believe me, I try not to.” But when Hux dared another glance upward, Skywalker’s face had returned to that earlier watchfulness, cunning and curious alike. “But those dreams…from what I can tell, they’re not visions. Or at least, they’re not of any future that is likely to come to pass.” His lips twisted. “They’re…from another life, as it were.”

The disappointment could not be entirely expected, but it still _hurt_ ; he had not thought to feel as though he himself had been demoted from general. “So why do we dream them?” Hux asked, voice salt-rough; Skywalker crossed his arms, shook his head.

“I’m not sure. Certainly, Ben is remarkably Force sensitive – as is Rey. As am I myself.” That piercing gaze seemed to stare right through him again. “But you’re not.”

Hux only just bit back on a _thank the stars for that_ ; he probably wasn’t in company that would appreciate the sentiment. “I didn’t ask for these dreams,” he said instead, hands against tightening in his lap. “And I certainly don’t want them, either.”

“But somebody wants you to have them.”

“Kylo said it was the Force.”

Luke actually snorted properly this time, low and almost amused. “ _Kylo_ doesn’t know everything.” And now, as his eyes darkened, Hux felt the gathering shadows about him even as the room remained brightly lit. Skywalker sat at their centre, pale and white and shimmering.

“In these dreams, he is a Knight of Ren.”

Hus shuddered, looked away. “He said that. Spoke of…Jedi ghost stories.”

“The dreams started here – for him, at least,” Luke murmured, and Hux found the next words lodged in his throat, tight and tasting of gall.

“He told me he dreamed of killing everyone in this place.”

“Did he tell you he wasn’t alone?”

A sudden, strange fear stole around his heart, gripped it hard. “I – _I_ wasn’t there, was I?”

“No.” Shifting his weight, Skywalker’s eyes fell to the fire; the light of it turned them very nearly purple. “He had his knights, then,” he said, and did not look up. “That’s where it started. For that version of Ben, at least.”

 _Kylo Ren_. “But it never happened, here,” Hux said, and then when very cold. “Unless—”

“No, I don’t think he’s going to do it. I didn’t send him away because I suddenly thought my nephew was going to go mad and slaughter everyone here.”

The odd flare of anger made no sense, and yet Hux felt powerless to resist it. “Then why _did_ you send him away?”

“I already said. It was to find you.”

Very still now, Hux pursed his lips. “But you never said _why_.”

“I dreamed of you, too.”

Looking down into the tea, the storm of leaves now settled and still, Hux wondered if this was what going mad actually felt like. “This is beginning to become really quite disturbing.”

To his surprise, Skywalker actually smiled; wry and weary, but still genuine enough. “Try being on my end,” he said, though any amusement he felt evaporated as quickly as it came. “Both Ben and I had those particular dreams. Of you, in white.”

Hux swallowed hard. “Rey had the same dream. Or at least, I presume she did. Senator Organa said that Rey described me to her as the man with the red hair, dressed all in white.”

Skywalker leaned forward, the unsettling blue of his eyes clearly fixed upon him. “What do you make of that?”

He had to look down. The kettle had begun to boil again, steam billowing from its narrow spout. “I have no idea,” he said, very slow. “I couldn’t have made Grand Admiral in the First Order. The rank simply doesn’t exist – or it didn’t, when I was there. I can’t imagine they would have restored it, given it was only awarded by the Emperor himself.” He looked up, met the gaze of the Hero of the Rebellion, said simply, “And the Empire is gone.”

Skywalker blinked, just once. “So they say.”

The shiver along his spine felt like fingers, warning and teasing and loving all at the same time. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“A great many things, in fact, but it’s not as simple as all that.”

Hux had never taken much time to imagine what it would have been like, in the times of the Jedi; as a child raised in exile, the First Order had taught of them as excesses, as relics, as something best left to dust and death. His education upon Coruscant had only spoken of them as near-ancient history. But as he sat now before the last of the Masters, he knew that he would have himself made a very poor Jedi indeed.

“Kylo said it was the Force doing this,” he repeated, and again Skywalker shook his head.

“Ben is very young in his powers, extensive as they are – and this goes far beyond Ben, of that much I can assure you.”

“So if it’s not the Force – then who _is_ giving me these dreams?” He could not help but think of the man he would never be when his voice sharpened, demanded: “And why, if I am so blind to everything else?”

Skywalker met his gaze, even and unbending. “In one timeline, you are a general of the First Order. In another, you are a Grand Admiral.” And then he almost smiled. “Who knows, then, what you might be here?”

A knock rapped out, sudden and harsh; both startled, turning to where the thin wood of door slid open. Skywalker already had one hand upon his belt, fingers tightening about the hilt clipped there.

But it was only Poe Dameron: panting, dark eyes wild, skin dotted with sweat. “It’s Rey,” he said, swift and strange. “We can’t find her. She’s _gone_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I have come to the conclusion, that nine out of ten Kylos I write need to be taught that one does not express affection by kidnapping the object of said affection. Sigh.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...so, after A MILLION YEARS, I finally got my shit together long enough to produce this. And I'm trying not to be negative about my writing right now, but basically I got put off writing this story after publishing the third chapter, and ended up more or less abandoning the whole thing. But at the time that happened, I had been happily working my way through this fourth chapter, and I did always want to come back to it. I could just never work up the courage to do it. But there have been some wonderful, fantastic people both here and on tumblr who have always encouraged me to try again whenever I despaired over the loss of this fic, and I just...I really cannot begin to thank you. I just can't. I have no idea how to express how much it honestly means to me, that despite everything, you would look forward to more of this crazy story.
> 
> With that said, I still don't know if it will be finished -- I had ended up planning for nine chapters, and this chapter is where the plot was supposed to start really coming into play. Because I honestly don't know if more will come, I ended up being really overindulgent in the writing, hence the 19k (!) length of it. Because, you know, I _missed_ this set up, and I just wanted to mess around with these two versions of the characters, just for a little bit longer. I hope there's some fun in that for you, too. (And, if you're new to the story: yes, it was originally begun in May, so various bits of canon we didn't know beforehand obviously don't appear in those parts. If I _do_ end up continuing this, I'm tempted to go back and rework certain elements, but...yeah. I don't know. It's not a decision I can make right now, but...)
> 
> Just as a heads-up, too -- the dream sequence in this chapter could/should likely be read as non-con, so be aware of that. It certainly doesn't do Hux or Kylo much good to see it, oh dear.
> 
> I also have to add that the incomparable [@ottenebrae](http://ottenebrae.tumblr.com) has done two pieces of fantastic fanart inspired by this fic; [Kylo and Hux at the dance](https://ottenebrare.tumblr.com/post/144045669858/fanart-for-claricechiarasorchas-incredible-au), and [Hux getting all wrapped up warm to be kidnapped](https://ottenebrare.tumblr.com/post/144401779863/totally-self-indulgent-fanart-from-another-part-of%22). Ha ha. I'm still amazed even now that I received such gift in this art, and it really _really_ helped remind me of why I wrote what I did, and that there would be reason enough to write more. Thank you so much. You are amazing.  <3

Dameron did not wait. Having delivered his message he was already gone, not waiting to see if anyone would follow. But Skywalker had already taken to his feet, moving swift and silent; as he struggled to keep pace, Hux knew the man to be a warrior in all respects. Even with his own half-assed military training, he found it difficult to fall into matched step, though it hardly mattered. They did not need to go far.

It seemed Dameron had run back to where he’d started from – a shame-faced looking Kylo, though said shame was also sheened with clear irritation. “ _Poe_ , you didn’t need to go get Master _Luke_ —”

“She’s _gone_.” Yet Dameron wasn’t even looking at Kylo, eyes fixed instead upon the shuttered features of Luke Skywalker. That did not stop one accusing finger from shooting out in Kylo’s general direction. “And _he_ says he can’t sense her!”

Even though Kylo clearly struggled to keep a neutral expression, those mobile features would always betray him. “No, look, it – no, it’s not that _bad_ —”

And Skywalker just sighed. “Ben.”

That single word, like a low pulse of disappointment like a blaster bolt to the gut – and Kylo folded with a sigh. The guilty look he wore now seemed far more suited to a child than a young man on the apparent cusp of adulthood. Already something like understanding had dawned upon Skywalker’s face.

“You taught her to mask, didn’t you?”

This time he outright started fidgeting, and again Hux had the uncomfortable feeling that he’d gotten just a bit closer to seeing what Kylo had been like as a child. As Ben Solo. “Well, the thing was…you _know_ what Rey’s like. She was forever following me around, and I just…J wanted to distract her, yeah?”

“Kylo.” And his head jerked around at Hux’s flat word, the high arch of one eyebrow. “What did you _do_.”

Even though Hux would have conceded to Luke on such matters, Kylo did somehow managed to look even guiltier before Hux’s gaze alone. “She’s…well. Rey. She’s kind of _overwhelming_ sometimes, right?”

“Ben.”

The dark eyes took on sudden wild gleam as he spun back to his uncle, like a man fighting a double-ended duel. “You can’t pretend she’s not!” he almost shouted, though utterly without malice; almost immediately his voice slumped back down, along with his shoulders. “And she _likes_ me, okay?”

Dameron’s own dark eyes rolled sharply towards the sky he’d been born to. “The gods alone know why.”

One booted foot jerked out to clip him hard in the ankle, even as Poe dodged Kylo’s sharply-angled foot. Not that Kylo appeared to mind the missed target, eyes and voice deeply imploring where he turned the full power of both upon his uncle. “Look, sometimes she just…she’s _there_ , all the time. And I…I can’t have people around me all the time. You know?”

A shiver crept along Hux’s spine at the oddity of it – the sudden desperation of Kylo’s words. As if he expected not to be believed. And Skywalker blinked, just once. His voice had turned soft when he said, “I do know.”

It bolstered him nearly beyond belief. As Kylo back straightened, eyes clearing, it made Hux realise for the first time how very much taller than his uncle he actually was. “So, I decided to teach her hide and seek. Not _regular_ hide and seek, obviously she knew how to do that already, but…just…I told her it would be more interesting. If we shielded. Because hide and seek for Jedi kids, it’s no fun.” Now he stared straight at Hux. “We can tell where people are. We can _feel_ them.”

He pursed his lips. “Yes, well, that’s not creepy at all.”

“Hux, I—”

“Ben.” One hand rose, the cybernetics shifting in low hum. “For now, let’s just focus on finding Rey.” Already his clear eyes had slipped away to the sprawl of the forest beyond the temple and its associated clearings, searching and distant. “She can’t have gone far, but she’s resourceful. And innately rather _too_ talented with the Force.”

“Wait a minute.” Only Dameron and Kylo looked to him, but Hux already knew it didn’t matter. “Just clarify for me, please: are you saying you were playing Jedi hide and seek with Rey just to get her to leave you alone, and now you can’t find her because you can’t _sense_ her?”

“Well, we don’t usually do it in the jungle. Just at my mother’s house.” The defensiveness evaporated almost entirely at Hux’s disbelieving look. “It’s…less complicated there. I guess.”

With a sigh, he raked his hand back through his hair, knowing it was ruined already. As was his day. It seemed inevitable, when in the company of children who possessed far more power than they could ever be held responsible for.

“Let’s go gear up, then.”

“What?”

“Let’s go find her.” His impatience grew even as Kylo’s jaw dropped lower. “And I want comms units in all hands. We’re not getting more people lost before sundown, Jedi powers or no.”

Kylo’s eyes felt to be a burning weight on him as he neatly pivoted, began to walk away. Despite the fact Hux didn’t even know where he was going, Dameron fell into step at his side – it seemed that the pilot, at least, knew how to take an order and follow it.

On the way to what Hux hoped would be a decently stocked supply cache, they collected several other initiates of the temple; apparently, the vast majority of them had gone out on some sort of exploratory lesson. Hux thought he heard Kylo muttering something about how everything would have been _easier_ if Master Luke had just sent Rey along with them in the first place, but Hux ignored it. He accepted a comm from Dameron instead, and as the others were issued he gave crisp command and direction. He didn’t even realise everybody had allowed him to do so until it was just him and Kylo, watching as the others fanned out from their central rendezvous point.

“You’re good at that.” The words came sudden as an avalanche, just as striking. “Giving orders, I mean.”

And Hux closed his eyes, breath caught in his throat – for a moment it tasted recycled, unnatural, the bitter starship air of a childhood long gone.

_And an adulthood you never knew._

“Well, apparently _you_ can’t follow them in the slightest, given we’re not doing this in pairs.” He kept his now opened eyes fixed upon the comm unit before him. “That’s your sector over there, Kylo. Get to it.”

“I could help you with yours.”

He didn’t even need to look to give him a hefty shove. “ _Go_.”

“What, no kiss?”

Looking to him at last, Hux offered two fingers instead, raised in a gesture considered obscene by at least twenty-three sentient species. Kylo’s answering grin was a wild thing, though Hux could see a new sense of purpose to him when he turned to go. From that alone he could be sure they would find his small cousin, one way or another.

But Hux hadn’t entirely lost sight of Kylo when he glanced to his own assigned area. Already he hoped Rey was getting bored of this game, wherever she was; even if she’d masked her spirit signature, or whatever it was that Force-minded individuals used to pick up on other nearby lifeforms, surely she’d be able to sense the heightened unease of those around her. Surely, she’d just come home on her own.

The comm unit had within its programming a basic positioning system; as Hux moved forward, it kept him within his own line. The vague sound of others in the distance reminded him that he was not as isolate as he felt. But the jungle muted voices. Even his own did not go far when he called her name, the single syllable swallowed up by the dense foliage within the space of mere feet.

Again he pushed his hair back, grimaced to find it already saturated with sweat – and when he looked up, he could not see the sky. But it had been blue before he’d moved into the forest. His Arkanian blood knew there was little chance of rain, for what little respite a warm drenching could offer him here.

The deeper he went, the more oppressive it became: that sort of strange quiet that made one feel as if they crawled through the cavernous veins of some giant, slumbering creature. He had but rarely spent time in such surroundings. What little forest remained to Coruscant was decorative, unnatural, severely curtailed in size.

But even then, _oppressive_ was perhaps the wrong word. The weight of it was great upon his shoulders, strange and unnatural to his city-reared mind, but Hux knew no fear. It did not even concern him, that he might become lost. The crackling static of the comms increased the further he deviated from the temple, the distant voices of others checking in with negative success fading further with each step. But Hux kept moving forward.

By now his entirely inappropriate clothing had soaked through to the skin, his hair frankly irreparable. Hux didn’t alter his pace, even as it suddenly occurred to him that he’d not asked about the native wildlife. But there had no sign of it, at any rate. It was fortunate, perhaps. He carried no weapon save his own stubborn need to cling to his life, as little use as that might be to anyone but himself.

So focused was he upon the way forward that he did not even glance upward – and he sensed not at all any presence there, until a bundle of limbs plummeted from the tree just as he passed beneath it. His shoulders bowed nearly to breaking beneath the sudden weight, driving him first to his knees, then forward to his opened palms; arms and clavicles alike shrieked at the sudden weight thrust upon them. And then much smaller hands were upon his head, face, arms – all as frantic as the voice that accompanied them.

“Hux?” Her voice pitched higher, and his lips curled in tight wince. “Hux, are you okay? I didn’t mean…” And now her hands closed panicky tight around his shoulders. “ _Hux_!”

With the wince now become full grimace he picked at her hands, only just gaining back enough of his winded breath to acknowledge her. “Rey.”

“Oh, you’re _okay_!” Immediately she let go, but only long enough to fling her arms about his neck. It only became all the more surreal when she buried a small face in his chest. When she spoke again, he could barely make out the meaning of her muffled, burbled words. “I do that to Benny all the time, but I forgot that you’re not…it’s okay when I do it to him because…I’m just…I’m _sorry_!”

Before she could really start bawling, Hux gentled her arms down, pushed her back just enough to take her in: her hair falling out in clumps, dotted literally with leaves. Lips trembling, eyes wide, face blotchy and wan. He knew enough to have heard the exhaustion in her voice, and allowed himself a silent sigh. He also wondered if perhaps she _had_ been lost, but then doubted it. Hux suspected instead she’d fallen asleep waiting for Kylo, and had only wakened by chance when he’d moved under her tree.

Taking a deep breath, Rey appeared to compose herself – only to find she couldn’t breathe through a clogged nose. To his horror she then swiped an arm across a snotty face, moving the mess around in newly disgusting ways.

“Don’t you have a handkerchief?”

Her face creased in lines of utter confusion. “A what?”

This time he sighed out loud. Even given the very mundane start to his own day, he didn’t have one of his own. Not that he was certain he would have offered it even if he had. “Never mind,” he muttered, and couldn’t quite mask a groan as he pushed palms to thighs, and levered his aching body upright again. “We need to go back. Everyone’s looking for you.”

“What? Why?” Even as she scrubbed at her face again, she seemed to be coming back to proper life. “…Benny can be _such_ a sore loser.”

“It’s not that,” he said, with no intention of getting into any debate with an eight year old. Instead he thumbed the comm, not waiting for acknowledgement. “This is Hux. I have Rey.”

An immediate explosion of static and voices burst out to him, loud enough to have both of them wincing; for all the words came garbled enough, the general relief was palpable. Hux let it go on for a full minute, then cut it dead.

“I’ll bring her back now, we’re probably about twenty-five minutes out.”

“What was she _doing_?”

Hux snorted; he’d never be able to claim not to recognise Kylo’s voice, anymore. “Exploring.”

The answering barrage of colourful expletives had Rey mesmerised. With a roll of his eyes, Hux cut him off mid-rant. “We’ll see you then,” he said, and then killed it dead. Completely.

In the silence that followed, heavy in the humid air, Rey suddenly let out a short, high giggle. “Benny’s real angry.”

“Yes, well.” Glancing upward, Hux frowned; he hadn’t realised it was actually beginning to get dark. He hadn’t even thought to bring some sort of torch, and he doubted the very basic comm unit would provide much illumination. “You shouldn’t stayed out so long.”

Rey wrinkled her nose. Then she rubbed it again, this time with part of her trailing overcoat. Hux pretended not to notice. He _wished_ he hadn’t noticed. But she was shaking her head, looking surprisingly put out. “But that’s just what kids _do_. Like you said, I was exploring.” And then she turned pragmatic. “Didn’t you do stuff like that? When you were a kid?”

“As a matter of fact, no. I didn’t.”

Her disbelief felt a palpable thing. “Really?”

Brushing the worst of the underbrush from his coat, Hux squinted back in the direction they’d come. Or at least, the direction he’d assumed he’d come from. Apparently once he’d met his primary target, he’d lost all his previous assurance about the task. “I grew up on an Imperial star destroyer.”

“Wow.”

He glanced back to her, unable to mask his surprise. “Not really.”

“No, _wow_.” Rey bounced two steps closer, and for a second he feared she actually meant to take his hand. “I mean, not the Imperial thing. That’s not good.” A distant, dreaming expression entered her eyes as she turned them upward, gazing through the thick canopy that barely allowed any sight of the sky. “But I would love to see a star destroyer.”

The wistful tone hit him hard. He had to look away, abdomen tight, churning. The general had loved his damn star destroyer. Hux had always felt his affection for it like a blaster barrage to the gut.

“I dream about them.” With his own eyes wide, face bone pale, Hux turned back. She scarcely seemed to notice, still looking only upward. “But not like…the ones in space. Broken ones.” Her eyes fixed upon him sharp and sudden he felt as if she’d jabbed him in the solar plexus with the blunt end of s staff. “Do you know about the battle of Jakku?”

It took him just a moment too long to even his voice enough to say, utterly innocuous, “I think everybody does, Rey.”

But from her frown, it seemed she could see the topic unsettled him. But still, she went on. “I wish I could see it.” The frown only deepened, for all the lightness of her words. “Not the battle, I mean. The ship graveyards.” She paused, then, glancing down at the ground before them with her brow furrowed deep. Then her head jerked up, eyes wide and very nearly confused. “I think it would be sad. But beautiful, too. You know?”

He didn’t know how to answer. Not when he wasn’t even sure what the question was. “I think I know, yes,” he said, very quiet. But already Rey had turned, leading them back through the jungle. He even just managed to dodge her grasping hand, though he couldn’t do much for the way she chattered on happily at his side: ships and mechanics, mostly. Her knowledge proved startling for her youth. He might have been more inclined to actively engage, if he hadn’t been wondering again at how long it would be before true nightfall.

“I can see you standing on the bridge, too.”

That startled him back to reality. The memory of the general, in his dark uniform, sent a furious pulse of chill energy down his rigid spine. “Oh, really?”

“All in white.” Rey grinned, and this time she did manage to snag his weightless hand. “You’re the grand admiral!”

He stopped dead. “What?”

Rey had kept moving forward; such opposing momentum broke their hands clean apart, and for a moment he thought she might just keep going, her dim white form swallowed up by the forest, leaving him alone. But then she stopped, turned, eyes suddenly troubled. “Well, I don’t see much else. But you’re all in white.” And then she outright frowned. “At least, I think…maybe…”

“Maybe what?”

“I’m…not sure.”

The words trailed behind her like smoke as she turned, began to pace away long before the shock of the moment had eased. Hux had almost lost sight of her when he lurched forward, long strides not bringing him to her side half so quick as they should have. Even when they were side by side, again, she had become little more than a pale smudge in the darkening twilight.

“I didn’t realise how late it was.”

“It’s fine.” It came so casual, to her. “I know where to go.”

“How?”

And she snorted. “I just do.” Stepping a little quicker, she called back, “Just follow me!”

For all his certainty in coming to find her, his feet stumbled over the path now. But the moment he truly fell behind, she stopped just ahead, looked back. As he come closer she held out her hand, but she did not mean him to take it. She smiled, and there it was: a small glowing globe rested in the palm, shedding light all around her. Though but a dim little thing, it was still lovely: a newborn star, cradled at the centre of its system.

Hux could only stare. Even his logical mind could not force him to touch such a thing. “Even for a Jedi,” he began, very slow, hoarse and halting, “that _can’t_ be normal.”

Rey only shrugged. “Yes, I guess not.”

“…but you’re still doing it.”

Turning to go, she hummed, happily to herself. Keeping his eyes determinedly away from the light source, he sought a new topic instead. “Are there animals here, do you think?”

“Animals?” She kept choosing her steps with a casual careless grace he couldn’t help but envy. “Like, ones that might eat us?”

It was poor phrasing, perhaps, but then she’d been the one to choose it. Not that she seemed particularly concerned. “I don’t recall much about the indigenous lifeforms of Yavin 4,” he said, deliberately evasive; she only snorted in return, sounding oddly like her older cousin.

“It’s okay.” He could almost imagine her patting him on the head, all mild comfort even as she pulled ahead again, called back, “They know we’re not going to hurt them!”

“I was more worried about _them_ hurting us.”

“They won’t.”

He did wonder how low he’d fallen, to be relying on a child’s assessment of his odds of basic survival. “Rey?”

“Yeah?”

But he found he didn’t know what to say. And even in the dark he could see her smiling. The terror of it would have made him stumble, if he hadn’t bullied both mind and body into moving ever forward. She was so at ease with something so alien to his own mind. He supposed he could have called it a child’s ignorance of the proper state of things: but then, he could not imagine Kylo having been so at ease with it. It seemed to be something entirely unique to Rey alone.

“So. You dreamed about me.”

The sudden subject change threw her off her stride not at all. “Yeah.”

“Doesn’t that worry you?”

“Not really.” She pushed a branch out of her face, held it so Hux could duck under it beside her. Even in the dim light, her face had scrunched up in deep thought. “Except…”

His skin prickled. Brushing at it told him it wasn’t some oversized arthropod from the jungle exploring new territory. He wasn’t sure he actually preferred the alternative. “Except what, Rey?”

“I don’t know.” She vaulted a small fallen log that he could take in one lengthened stride. “It’s like…maybe you weren’t as happy as you thought you’d be.” She paused, poised upon the cusp of something more. And then she appeared to just give it up entirely. “Or something.”

Now his skin took on a definite cool chill, even with the remaining heat of a dying day. He had always admired the admirals, as a child. Had the Empire not fallen, he would have wanted to be little else but one of them.

“It was always something I aspired to,” he said, slow, careful.

In answer Rey gave only a little hum, still moving ever forward. A strangely simple silence fell between them, held all the way back to the temple. The light winked out, quite sudden, plunging them into sudden darkness – alleviated a moment later by a meeting party.

Fierce arms swept Rey into immediate embrace – but Kylo just aspromptly launched into a scolding that Hux could easily have imagined originating with Leia Organa. Skywalker’s watchful eyes drank in the scene, Dameron standing somewhat to the side and behind. When Hux shifted, the pilot caught Hux’s glance. A moment later, and he gave a quirked eyebrow in return, matched by a crooked smile of uncertain invitation. Hux looked away. He might not be entirely sure what to make of Poe Dameron now, but had circumstances been different, he might have been inclined to ask the man to show him more of the sights of his home planet.

But then his eyes shifted back to Rey, and Kylo. And he didn’t look away again.

Dinner became a simple affair, given that the students who had stayed behind to do the daily chores and prepare the meal had been those subsequently deployed to find Rey. But Hux found it pleasant enough: raw root vegetables tossed in leafy greens, garnished with milk and cheeses from the stock animals raised and kept by the temple. The main course was followed with fruits, large and juicy and almost spicy in taste, far more vital than anything he’d ever eaten in Coruscant.

The two of them ate away from the students, though not far. But Hux made no move to rise when they did, sticky fingers working on dismantling another segmented fruit. Kylo remained by his side as the others dispersed, seemingly content; across from them Rey appeared to have finally given up. She’d eating with Skywalker and Dameron, and on the earlier occasions Hux had glanced over, she seemed well on her way to exhausted sleep before the meal had even finished.

Now Hux himself fell to formless daydreaming, staring out into the starfield above. Oddly, it was Skywalker who pulled him back down to solid ground, and not Kylo. “I’ve arranged a room for you,” he said, simple, straight. “I thought you’d be happier away from the students.” And then, far sharper, brooking no argument: “Ben, your bed’s just as you left it.”

“Unmade, probably.” At his side, voice heavy with drowsiness, Rey licked her fingers. “Aunt Leia forbid the servants from ever doing his chores for him. He still doesn’t do them.”

Kylo rolled his eyes skyward. “Thanks _so_ much for your contribution, Rey.”

“That’s okay, Benny!”

Skywalker ignored them both. It appeared an acquired skill. “Seeing as Ben brought you here so…expediently, you didn’t have time to pack, I assume?” Before Hux could reply, he was nodding, fingers rolling over his beard. “We’ll find something.”

Finished with the fruit, now, Hux pressed his hands together, found his fingers uncomfortably tacky. At the well, he used the cool clear water, and then cupped clean hands to drink deep of its earthy mineral taste. Kylo had taken their plates away to wash them himself, but returned soon enough, wordlessly indicated he should follow.

In that strange silence they moved together through the arcades of the temple, the sound of the students growing dimmer as they moved further away. Presently they arrived at small room, its stone floor covered by woven mats, the bed but a simple futon upon the floor. The far wall proved non-existent, though Kylo soon explained that woven panels could be pulled across for privacy or to ward off a chill.

Given the pervasive warmth that penetrated everything, now, Hux could hardly imagine such a thing. Glancing back to Kylo, he then reminded himself how quickly things could and would change. His face seemed strangely aged in the flickering light of the single lantern.

“I’ll be back soon,” Kylo said, very quiet – and then he was gone, moving on silent feet that made it seem as though he’d hardly been there at all.

It left Hux little else to do but sit on the veranda. It might be open-walled, but in this part of the complex it seemed he had enviable privacy. He could hear nothing of the students, nor see anything of where they slept. He had only the valley before him, the temple itself set up upon the low hill that the pyramid crowned. He knew nothing of meditation, or even of mindful thought. Yet it seemed almost easy to sit there, to become watchful and silent, to give over to the soft smooth air of Yavin 4.

The voice startled him, from behind. “I brought you some clothes.”

It took some doing to conceal the way Kylo’s reappearance had kicked his heart into something like cardiac arrest, but Hux thought he did well enough as he began sifting through them. “Yours?”

“Well, most of the other students are younger than me. Or smaller. Or both.” Kylo outright snickered, then. “And Uncle Luke’s like, half-Ewok or something. No extra hair, but I could use him as a footstool.”

A snort was all the agreement Hux would permit himself; he was, after all, Master Skywalker’s guest here. And in that silence he chose a pair of trousers that seemed designed for sleep, and a tunic to match, both somewhat close to his own size. Thoughtless in his growing tired, his hands moved to his belt. Then he glanced up, frowned.

“Kylo?”

The sharp prompt seemed to startle him from his watchful daze. He at least had grace enough to look somewhat embarrassed when he said, “Do you want to wash? I’ll show you where.”

The small private bathing chamber gifted to guests was but a short ways down the corridor. The temple had no plumbed water, but it appeared Kylo had hauled several pails of water from the well. They were not warm, of course, but the faint cool was still welcome upon his skin. With a sigh Hux sluiced the worst of the day off, aided by a liquid soap scented with flowers he did not know, could not ever hope to name.

When he stepped out of the chamber, dressed and hair still damp, he found Kylo there, leaning against the wall. Self-consciousness hit him hard, and he wished suddenly for a lounging robe to cover her sleeping clothes. Many things had been apparent from the dreams, but this was a simple one: Kylo had not yet reached his full physical potential. There would be more of him, if he continued his training. Broad and hard and wide. And Hux swallowed, hard, and pulled again at the drawstring. Even with that still to come, Kylo’s garments hung loose on his frame. Then he glanced up, and it only got worse.

Kylo was staring at his narrow hips, blinking hard. “This…isn’t how I imagined you getting into my pants.”

With something edging close to a snarl, he pushed past. He knew the way back. “Don’t do jokes, Kylo. You’re not good at them.”

And Hux could all but feel him sulking as they moved back towards his room. Yet the heat had gone out of them both by the time they reached his room again. Hux entered alone, leaving Kylo, awkward in the door frame.

Several safe feet from his bed, Hux turned, and frowned deep. “Why are you standing there?”

At first Kylo appeared to have no words at all, mouth opened on silence. And then he tried again, voice pitching higher than normal. “Can…can I stay with you?”

“I thought your uncle said your old bed was the way you left it. In the dormitory.”

“He did. It is.” For a moment, he appeared little more than an overgrown child, perplexed and unhappy in an adult’s world. “I just…I don’t…”

“Kylo.” He let it be gentle, but did not temper its firmness. “Good _night_.”

Now he outright frowned. Hux still gently closed the door in his face, and looked to the pallet. Exhaustion took him them, heavy and hard, leaving him swaying on his feet. With some difficulty he made those few steps on his own, for a moment almost regretting having had sent Kylo away. And then he was fallen amongst the blankets, eyes closed, sleep chasing him down almost immediately.

There were no dreams. He didn’t even want to wonder why that should disappoint him.

 

*****

 

Breakfast passed in a similar way to the evening meal, except it had been Rey who’d come to fetch him. It might have seemed odd, if not for the contrite manner of her arrival, and the hurried breathless apology she’d expelled as she’d led him back to the common area of the temple complex.

But though he’d met with Kylo later, dressed strangely enough in something not unlike the trousers and tunics of the other students, he hadn’t expected Kylo to stay so close. Instead he’d assumed Kylo would go to his uncle, to rejoin the lessons he’d been avoiding during his self-imposed exile on Coruscant.

And yet, after the remnants of breakfast had been tidied and swept away, Kylo remained still at his side. “We should go for a walk,” he said, as the last of the students trickled away. And Hux, still adjusting the odd clothing that really didn’t fit, gave him an even odder look.

“A walk?”

“You’ve never been to Yavin 4.” It did not sound like a jab. In fact, it did not even sound like pity. “I should show you around. It’s…well. Interesting. I guess.”

This eye roll was an utterly exaggerated as he could make it. “How could I say no in the face of such enthusiasm?”

But it became apparent enough why Kylo had wanted to take Hux away from the temple proper. They were by the river, watching the leaping fish, silver-blue in the bright sunlight, when he drew in a worrisome sigh. And then, he let it out, following it with words that struck a cold knell into Hux’s stilled heart.

“Your father is gone.” The stick he held in his hands, light and easy, poked with sudden viciousness into the swift run of the river. “He fled Coruscant the same day we left.” A pause, and then he let it go; it darted away on the currents, vanishing but a second later. “I don’t think he even knew that you’d gone anywhere.”

His lips had turned numb, his tongue leaden weight in a still mouth. The water provided him only a blocky, broken reflection of himself. But that was fine. Hux didn’t really want to know what he looked like in this moment, anyway.

“Well,” he said, eventually. Slowly. Carelessly. “I’m not even surprised, come to think of it.” And then he laughed, and there his voice broke. “He must have left almost immediately after I did.”

As Hux subsided to silence, Kylo shook his head, fingers closing about nothing more than air. “Something like that,” he muttered. The next words came reluctant, though far from uncertain. “They’re looking for you.” It was perfectly unnecessary when he added, “they think you went with him.”

“Excellent.” He ached to stand, to move, to _run_. But he did not move. It was not as if he had anywhere to go. “You know, I did _so_ always want to be a fugitive from justice. Especially with so few resources to my name and the complete lack of a foolproof backup plan.”

Kylo moves beside him, a strange swaying motion, uncertain and unknowing. But Hux does not lean into the offered touch, the awkward promised comfort. “Hux,” he says, finally, “I… _we’re_ here.”

“I’d noticed.”

The dry voice had him frowning, and deeply so. “No, I mean…” The words fought him, and valiantly so; soon enough Kylo surrendered with a frustrated blow of air, hands raised and then fallen to his lap. “You’re part of the family, now.” He paused, then added hurriedly before Hux could protest, “Not that I’m saying we’re exactly the model family of the New Republic or anything. But still.”

The shock of such a statement kept him silent for a long moment. “But still,” he echoed, at last. The river kept on running, right before his eyes. Just another thing he’d never seen in his many years in Coruscant. “Well,” he said, and wondered what it would feel like to drown. “I suppose Brendol always did know how to play his hand, right at the last moment.”

Unspoken behind those words lay a simple question, one that Hux knew Kylo would hear: _did you know?_ But it surprised him to know that he himself _didn’t_ want the answer to said question. It didn’t matter, anyway. He was here, now. And Skywalker himself had told him that _he’d_ asked Kylo to bring him here. And he bit back on a half-hysterical cackle; part of the family, indeed.

Kylo’s next words hit him as violent as a hurricane. “I could take you back.” One hand rose, head moving in swift back and forth before Hux could say a word. “Not to Coruscant.” The dark eyes held nothing but fierce sincerity when he clarified. “To the First Order. If…if that’s what you wanted.”

Of all the strange and terrible things that had happened to him recently, this was the one that Hux could not believe. “ _Excuse_ me?”

“You…” High-boned cheeks burned with sudden high flush, each word a struggle. “I just…I don’t want you to feel like…”

As Kylo trailed off, Hux continued only to stare. When he did speak, it was entirely without prior thought. “Would you come with me?”

“No.” He said it immediately, definitely, undeniable. But a pause followed, and its conclusion was utterly predictable. “But if you _are_ going, could you at least fuck me first?”

Exasperation enveloped him, as warm and rich as the air they now breathed. “Do you think of nothing else?”

“Well, as you’re so fond of pointing out, I _am_ a seventeen year old boy.”

Nothing about this day could be any more surreal. And then Hux supposed he oughtn’t to challenge the universe with such foolish thoughts. “Almost eighteen, I thought you said.”

“Oh, are you going to be the creepy old man who waits until exactly my lifeday to get into my pants?” Kylo then made the mistake of pausing, actually appearing to consider the implications. “…yeah, okay. I can live with that.”

Hux wanted nothing more to buy his head in his hands. He settled instead for a sharp, wry, “Well, if I’m expecting a sudden explosion of maturity to happen on said lifeday, I suspect I’m in for considerable disappointment.”

Kylo grinned, far too broadly. “But you _are_ going to be disappointed.”

And Hux could only look away from such luminous pleasure. “I have such a headache.”

It wasn’t a lie; between the fact his body hadn’t quite adjusted to the timezone of Yavin 4, and then the revelation Kylo had brought with him, Hux wanted little more than to crawl back into his tiny pallet, and forget that the galaxy existed, at least for the rest of this day. He was nothing and nowhere, but for now, he just didn’t care to think on what that truly meant.

“I can fix that.”

With face creased in disbelief, Hux glanced to Kylo. “What?”

“Healing’s a Jedi thing.” With his chin tilted high but shoulders held too stiff, Kylo managed to look both proud and panicked. “I’m not _good_ at it, but I did have to learn how.”

The dubious look this earned would have discouraged even the most enthusiastic of idiots. But then, Kylo had always had strange ideas about their relationship. “You really don’t know how to gain someone’s trust, do you.”

He shrugged, careless and casual. “I kidnapped you. I figured that kind of ruined the trust thing outright.”

“Well, at least you _realise_ what you did.”

“I still did it.” Naturally he had the absolute temerity to sound proud of it. Standing, Hux turned back to what he believed was the direction he had come, and began to brush off his borrowed clothes.

“So you did,” he muttered, and then shook the head in question; he doubted this was the sort of agony even the most logical of analgesics could solve. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” He was already moving. “Let’s go back.”

In the quiet, they moved together, Hux keeping his mind to himself. He still realised Kylo would know he thought of his father, of the life he’d have so cheerfully condemned his son to. Somewhere, behind it, came also the lonely thought of Senator Gillen, returning to her homeworld, and the place by her side that would almost certainly never be his now.

They passed by the bottom steppes of the pyramid before the temple itself; it was Hux who stepped first. He could feel his eyes on him even as he kept his eyes upward, tracing out the peculiar architecture of this ancient thing. Buildings in Coruscant rose and fell with the sun, changing with the tides of endless trends. This construct seemed a part of the earth itself.

“Do you want to climb up there?” Kylo asked, too sudden. “The view’s pretty amazing.”

Hux blinked, rapid and uncertain, stepping so that the sunlight didn’t get into his aching eyes again. “Are we _allowed_ to go climbing up there?” The words felt wrong, somehow. “Isn’t it…sacred? Or something?”

A look almost like amusement crossed his features. Not that Hux noticed, or so he told himself. “I never would have picked you as the religious type.”

“I’m not.” Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, he added, too quick, “That doesn’t mean I can’t respect the beliefs of others.”

“That sounds like a lie.”

“ _Kylo_.”

“I just…” His teeth drew in his lower lip, began to chew. “…the general wouldn’t have said that.”

“Well, I’m not the general, am I?” Reaching forward, Hux found his grip, one foot rising to the first step. Even in the heat of the humid air, the rock felt cool and crumbling beneath his fingers. “I barely even know who _I_ am.”

Muttered as the words had been, he still knew Kylo had heard them. He told himself he didn’t care. And that it didn’t matter, either.

While he’d never been a physical person, the exertion struck him as somehow cleansing. Already the headache of earlier had begun to ebb somewhat further back in his mind; he didn’t have to _think_ to do this. Not of himself, not of Kylo, and certainly not of the father who would have abandoned him to the wilds of Coruscant – and more to sink, than ever to swim.

_And it’s not like_ he _ever taught me even the simplest of strokes, himself._

They didn’t go all the way to the top. Kylo didn’t say anything, but somehow Hux knew it wouldn’t be appropriate. Yet he found himself more than content to sit near the apex. It even felt as if he could almost see the curvature of Yavin 4, though he told himself it wasn’t _that_ small a moon. Either way, there was a cooler bite to the air this high up, and it was very welcome on his skin. Despite the heat, he’d dressed that morning in clothing that covered him from ankles to throat; he knew otherwise he’d be baked by midday. But up here, Hux began to strip some of the layers away, for all it was probably a worse place to be doing it.

Kylo seemed comfortable enough as he was, one knee pulled up while the other leg dangled, something contemplative in his eyes as he looked out over the land before them. Vague specks on the ground were the only other sign of life: the students about some exercise in the temple grounds.

 “I should probably explain something to you,” he said, abrupt. “About my family.” But the words softened somewhat as he added, “Seeing as you’re part of it, now.”

“Just because I’m an effective orphan, it doesn’t mean I need adopting. I’m a grown man.” Hux looked purposefully away from the flicker of hurt he saw in those dark eyes. “And I’m not sure _anyone_ could explain your family, Kylo.”

“Well, it only gets worse.” He scowled, scuffed at the crumbling edge of one step. “My uncle’s Luke Skywalker.”

“Yes, we’ve met.”

The dry words were waved away like he was driving off some bloodsucking insect. “My mother is his true-blooded sister. She was adopted by Bail Organa and his wife Breha when she was a baby, which is how she became the princess of Alderaan.”

Hux just rolled his eyes in return. “This story _has_ gone around the Republic,” he said, as smooth and easy as any speech he’d given in the senate’s meeting rooms. “The long-lost siblings, brought together by the Force, which they then used to save the galaxy entire: he as warrior, she as politician.”

“Do you know who their father was?” Kylo asked, challenging. The answer came swift enough; Hux had always been top of his classes for a reason.

“Anakin Skywalker.” At Kylo’s raised eyebrow, he went on. “A Jedi Master who died towards the rise of the Empire.” Still Kylo said nothing, dark eyes radiant unspoken demand. Hux took an impatient breath, added with a sharpness not earlier intended, “He was a hero, by all accounts. Until he went mad with the Force, and was…put down, shall we say, by his former Master. Before he could turn true Sith.”

Kylo shook his head, somehow managing to look both triumphant and torn. “Not really.” His long fingers wrapped abruptly about one another, very still in his lap. “He didn’t die.”

The sudden frown cut deep. “What?”

“Well, _Anakin Skywalker_ died. I guess. He took another name. Another life.”

His skin had begun a fierce crawl, as if it fully intended to slip his bones and leave him bleeding and bare. “What do you mean?”

“My grandfather was Darth Vader.”

He’d had absolutely no idea how to react to his own father’s betrayal. It left him with no reaction whatsoever to this. “…oh.”

The empathy in Kylo’s eyes hurt. But he couldn’t look away, for all it felt like he ran into the same fist over and over again. “They don’t talk about it. It’s the deep dark family secret, sure, but even then…they don’t really see the point.” His hands had fisted, eyes downturned and shadowed; his voice came tight, low string tuned nearly to breaking. “But when they tell stories about how Luke Skywalker brought down the Empire…they don’t say what really happened. That Palpatine was killing Luke.” He took a deep breath, let it out over three shaking seconds. “That Vader snapped when he saw it.” He glanced up, then, eyes overbright for all their darkness. “That he gave up all he’d done just to save his son’s life, before he himself died. And…yeah. Uncle Luke doesn’t talk about it much. But sometimes, I get the sense…” He looked down again, to callused clever hands that now lay almost too still. “…it’s like Anakin just didn’t want to die alone.”

In the quiet that followed, Hux studied the bowed profile of Ben Organa Solo, only son of two of the greatest heroes of the Rebellion. Then he looked down at his own hands, pale and still, those of the abandoned son of a traitor twice over.

“Who was their mother?” he asked, very quiet. And Kylo glanced up, his half-smile a quiet and very nearly quaint thing.

“Padmé Amidala.”

“…what, the senator from Naboo?”

“Yes.” Hux’s surprise seemed to give him great delight; with grudging grace, Hux had to admit it made him look far better than he had a moment ago. “They were married, actually. But it was a secret, for a lot of reasons.” All but vibrating with uncertainty, Kylo inched a little closer: and then, closer still. “They met when they were both very young. When she was still Queen.” His dark eyes, always too large, seemed fit enough to swallow the world. “But they knew. Even then, they _knew_.”

Like a man turning from burning starheart, Hux could do nothing more than look away. “Kriff.”

It seemed, for a terrible moment, that Kylo would keep coming – that he would put his hands on him all the same, take from him again that kiss they had shared on Coruscant. And Hux did not know how he could be expected to say no, again.

But with a sigh, Kylo pulled back. “Yeah.” The single word came strangled, aching; it was a long moment before he cleared his throat, started again in something that sounded far more normal. “So, like I said, we’re hardly the model family of the New Republic.” His chuckle came quick, unexpected. “Sometimes I think back to how excited Rey gets about it sometimes, and I just…”

“Wait.” But it was Hux himself who stopped, eyes narrowed and fixed yet upon the tree-shrouded ruins of the dead city before them. He spoke very slow, and very careful. “You’re saying Rey _knows_ who her father is?”

Swinging his long legs over the crumbling edge, Kylo seemed more petulant than childish in his shrug. “Sure.”

“Then…why pretend otherwise?”

“In all honesty? It wasn’t pretending, at first. It was all very serious.” Though he hunched forward upon himself now, Hux could see no clear intention in the gesture; Ren’s eyes were unblinking where they rested upon his opened hands. “They really didn’t want her to know who her parents were. Because it would be…too much. Because even before she was born, even non-sensitives could tell she would be powerful.” Hux’s stomach had begun to crawl; Ren’s words had turned too light, almost mocking in their sing-song ease. “That’s a huge responsibility, right from the beginning.” His smile now was a brilliant thing, strikingly beautiful: a mask that could not take the misery from his dark still eyes. “They didn’t want her feeling pressured to live up to her family, or to avoid the mistakes some of them had already made.”

Hux swallowed, words barely above a murmur. “Because of you.”

The forests of Yavin 4 surrounded them on all sides, their edges soft against the late morning sky. It would rain, he thought, and soon. And Hux could not see now the stormy dark of Ren’s lowered gaze, the smile now utterly vanished. “The failed family experiment, yes.”

He yearned to reach out, to lay his own hand upon a trembling shoulder. He kept that much to himself. But he still offered the low sympathy of a single word: a fate chosen, instead of forced. “Kylo.”

Though he waved it away, Hux knew he had taken it to heart all the same. “But as it turned out, it really didn’t matter. She _knew_.” It was almost long-suffering, the look Kylo gave him then. “Right from the beginning. She saw Luke, and knew he was her father. It rendered the entire thing with my parents kind of moot.” Again his gaze slipped away, to somewhere far further than the horizon before them. “I don’t think she’s ever met her mother, aside from the obvious. But…she _knows_ her. She can feel her. I don’t think her mother talks to her, but she doesn’t shield from her.”

It hurt more than it should have to ask the next question. Still Hux wondered why it mattered. “Why did her mother leave?”

“That, I really don’t know. But she’s not a Jedi – though she’s no Sith, either. But there were things she had to do.” His mouth twisted. “Things she didn’t want her daughter tainted by. Not until she had the age and strength to choose her own path for herself.” And his head bowed, as if such minor gesture could make an oversized body as small as he seemed to feel. “Or so Luke says.”

“Kylo—”

“I don’t want to talk about it, all right?”

Hux let the quiet lie between them, a moment. At least the disaster of Kylo’s family could be said to put the small tragedies of his own into some perspective. “So, what surname does she actually use? Not Skywalker, surely.”

That had him looking up, forehead still creased in faint line. “Organa, usually.”

“Really?” It had him frowning; for all he loathed his own name, he still took a welcome degree of spite in using it, given how much it had always irritated his namesake to share it with such a failure. Not that he had any intention of changing it even now. “So why doesn’t she use Solo?”

A sour look overtook his features, leaving them in unnatural shadow. “Well, it would have been traditional, sure. But when it was suggested, my father said no thank you very much, he already had one monster bearing his family name, he didn’t need two.”

The chill of his bones and blood should have transmutated him utterly to ice. “He didn’t.”

“He did. But maybe not in those exact words.” He’d turned to looking at the sky, again. “But I knew what he meant.”

Hux had met Han Solo but the once, and only briefly at that. City gossip said he usually spent his time on Theron, both managing the Five Sabers races while training his own young pilots. And he recalled, vaguely, that both Dameron and Kylo himself had intimated that Kylo rarely flew – now, if ever.

_Fathers do not always know what is best for their sons, at all, at all._

“You’re not a monster, Kylo,” he said, very quiet. But he knew why Han Solo had felt that fear. He’d known it himself, and more than once.

But Kylo only sighed, shaking his head with a weariness far beyond his seventeen years. “No. I’m not. But a part of me is.” His gaze had turned wry, watery. “But you know that. Because you have the same thing.”

Hux did know. It was the part of him that would have cheerfully put his hands around Chadri Dio’s neck and choked him until a purple tongue protruded from his mouth, eyes staring and blooming with the crimson stellate patterns of burst blood vessels. And he turned away, took a deep and unsteady breath, and looked down. It would be a long way to fall. He wondered why he felt as though he’d already hit the ground.

“You don’t know much about lightsabers.”

The non sequitur had him turning, frowning. “Why would I?”

“You don’t have to be embarrassed. They don’t usually flaunt that sort of information around, even in the New Republic. I can’t imagine they gave you much in the First Order.”

Strange shifts in logic had always left him uneasy in conversation; Kylo’s were really something out of even the worse leagues he’d previously known. “What’s your point?”

“My saber.”

“Yes?”

“It’s red.”

“So?”

Kylo’s eyes rolled skyward, though not even that bright blue sky could hope to lighten their deep colour. “Tradition has it that only the Sith use red sabers. Yeah?”

His lips tightened, understanding blooming like the first sparks of a forest fire. “But you’re not a Sith.” And he paused, said quiet, “…are you?”

Kylo snorted, too comfortable to be a falsehood. “No.”

Again Hux’s confusion began to grow, and with it returned his earlier irritation. Jedi temple or no, he had not come for esoteric lesson. “So, what – does it mean you’re going to be?”

“No. It’s not really how it works.” Looking back down to his empty hands, his brow creased, the disaster of his dark hair falling into his eyes. “When I first constructed it, the crystal was whole. It seemed fine. But it cracked the moment I first ignited it. And the blade’s always been red, though the crystal had turned blue, the first time I held it.”

“What, is it like some early warning system of you going to the Dark Side, or whatever it is when Jedi fall?”

He shook his head, definite enough. “It’s just the way it has always been.”

If Kylo was trying to make a point, Hux had no idea what it actually was. “I’ve told you before, I don’t hold much store in faith and destiny,” he said, and it must have been the wrong thing; Kylo only shook his head again, pressing his hands over his thighs.

“You should.” That damnable lopsided smile had returned to his face again, this time curving in a manner almost sad. “But it’s okay. You can learn.” Glanced again to the horizon, jagged and green against the brilliant blue of the sky above, he nodded his head. Just once. “We have time.”

“Do we?”

“Yes.” His hand reached out, hovered over his for a moment, then retracted. “Yes, we do.”

In the silence that remained, Hux stared out across the rainforests of Yavin 4, and wondered at what his time would be. His father was gone. That should have been the end of his time altogether.

_(“You’re part of the family, now.”)_

“My grandfather made his choices,” Kylo said, very quiet. “That doesn’t mean I don’t still get to make my own.”

“But you’re worried.”

And he laughed, without humour. “With a family like mine, wouldn’t you be?”

Hux closed his eyes. What he’d had, had never been much of a home. But it had been his, once. It never would be again. “Families are complicated, yes.”

Warm, overlarge hands closed about his face; they forced Hux to meet his eyes, uncaring of his surprise, or the knee he so nearly took to the gut. “Your father didn’t deserve you,” he said, fierce, low. “You’re so much better than he will ever know.”

“Oh, he’ll _know_ , Kylo.” When he smiled, it was all teeth and terror. “I’ll make damn sure he knows.”

“Yes.” Kylo’s gloating glee was a terrible thing. “Yes, you will.”

The sensation of Kylo’s skin against his own felt a potent drug; he pulled away before it could drag him under. Turning from Kylo’s frown he looked down the length of the dizzying steps, and then beyond to one of the temple courtyards. There upon the stones students moved in tandem, in rhythmic form. It held little enough in common with his faint memories of the ‘troopers, the cadets of the long-fallen academy. That had been all singular order. This was different. Each movement shone with an individual light, even as each different step leai to the same ultimate dance.

“We should go in,” he said, sudden, rising. At his side, Kylo had gone very still.

“Do we have to?”

“Yes.” Hux looked only forward. “We do.”

And Kylo blew out a short, fierce breath. “Duty comes so easy, to you.” The question sounded almost angry. “But what about desire?”

Hux turned, looked down. “What about it?”

Hux didn’t know what Kylo saw in his steady gaze then. But whatever it was, it had him turning, moving down, following something that hadn’t even entirely been an order.

“Forget it,” he said, faint enough for all Hux still heard it. And as Kylo pulled ahead, Hux followed, picking a slower and more sensible path down. But somehow he already knew that they both never would.

 

*****

_Hux finds the general in absolute chaos. At first, he cannot even think – for the_ general _himself cannot think, his once-orderly mind now a cacophony of conflicting thought and emotion. And yet he has not turned away from his duty, even now attempting to wrangle the situation back beneath his own durasteel control._

_A voice trembles at his side, exhausted, uncertain. “Sir?”_

_The general doesn’t look up from the holopad before him, for all his eyes ache and blur at the endless stream of data on the multiple split of his screen. “If you haven’t finished collating the data, Lieutenant, I don’t want to hear it.”_

_He has far more issues than he cares for, already. The Finalizer had made the jump to hyperspace cleanly enough, but the strain of additional bodies on board had caused them to burn through more fuel that he would have preferred. She had been fully staffed at the time of Starkiller’s own supernova death; they had evacuated almost a full quarter of the base’s staff onto her – and for all her massive size, she has precious little space for the base’s refugees._

_As it is, they are still tracking down the last of those ships known to have made their own hyperspace jumps, and accounting for those lost in the blast itself. Some wonder at the effort; the general considers it would be good staff otherwise wasted. And though the capture of those not yet docked could not mean much in the greater scheme of matters, given the Resistance had already destroyed the one weapon they knew most about, the general has no intention of allowing further staff to fall amongst their ranks. One defector is an anomaly. More than that, and it will become a full blown mutiny._

_Inside the general’s mind, Hux can barely hold onto the shape of his own thoughts; those of the general twist and twine and tear around his own mind, troubling and troubled. Something terrible has happened. Hux recalls the great weapon they had spoken of, had seen fired: apparently it lies now destroyed._

_And Hux himself cannot figure his own feelings on the subject, subsumed as they are by those of the general. It is sorrow, and disgust, and – despair, perhaps. They are an avalanche, and yet they are in turn buried beneath the general’s fierce desire to reorder the disaster visited upon them. And the general has not slept. Hux can feel the telltale jitter of stimulants, though not as many as might have been expected; he suspects the general has not seen his bunk for three, maybe four cycles._

_Yet the man remains on his aching feet, every movement quick and urgent. He barks orders, accepts new data, reformulates plans, issues new command. It exhausts Hux just to be in his mind. But the general falters not._

There will be time enough for that, later.

_The thought burns Hux, for all it is not his own. Beneath it there is a…sense of something else. Of something yet looming. Of something that will bring everything to a screeching halt – everything of the general, at least. The First Order will go on. That is important._

_But still: that sorrow. That despair. Both are as small and shuttered as a child hidden beneath a bed, curled and crawled deep. But somewhere above he hears it still: the relentless beat of the rain, the bellow of a searching man tearing through a great empty house. And Hux closes his own eyes, deep within the mind of his other self, and shudders to remember the exact same sound._

_“Sir.”_

_It is the same voice as before, even less certain now. Hux follows as the general turns his eyes upon the ashen-faced lieutenant, wilting in a uniform barely fit for inspection. “Mitaka.” The words carve a glacial path, unerring and without mercy. “I won’t repeat myself.”_

_He shakes his head, hands twisted about his officer’s cap, no holopad in sight. “It’s an urgent call from the officer’s medbay.” His voice cracks on the last word; admirably, by the next, he at least sounds human again. “They request your immediate presence.”_

_Scorn just barely covers the unnatural stillness that has overtaken the man now. “They cannot do their job without a general?”_

_“I don’t believe it’s their job that is the problem.”_

_Hux can read too easily the thoughts that move through the general’s mind now: it would be easy enough to turn away. To dismiss Mitaka and his misery, to walk away from something that is hardly his responsibility any longer. He has done all that has been ordered him: he has taken Kylo Ren from the disintegrating surface, and delivered the fool into the hands of those who will keep him alive for the journey._

_But it will be a fight to do achieve that goal, even if Kylo Ren is co-operative. As the general wordlessly glares at the lieutenant before him, Hux can see flashes of recent memory: of snow swirling in his eyes, crystallised on eyelashes even as the ground beneath his feet shifted, the uneasy lurch of land now free of true anchor, set adrift upon a sea of molten death._

_“The bridge is yours.” The order is abrupt, piercing through the unhappy officer like a blunt blade. “I will not be long.”_

_When he walks through the corridors, they are not the pristine perfection of before. They are lined with people, faces desperate and determined, the air thick and frantic about them. The greatcoat billows out behind him, stride long and in perfect military time. Hux thinks even without it, all eyes would still have been drawn to the general. He feels it from them all: fear, and sympathy both. It is as if they behold a man walking to the scaffold – and not only are they glad that he makes that journey instead of them, they envy him the release that death will promise._

_But when they arrive at last to the officer’s medbay, Hux dimly wonders if perhaps this truly is a place of execution: the door is missing, the frame barely recognisable as such. The unnatural strain forced upon the metal has left it all in twisted ruin, and he cannot imagine this had been caused by the demise of Starkiller. Not when the rest of the ship appears so utterly intact._

_The medical officers themselves are barely better than the ruin of their surroundings. “General,” says one, wretched, whites bloodied and torn. “We would not disturb you, but—”_

_“I understand the situation.” He does not even look to them. “Get out.”_

_“Sir—”_

_Now he turns. Stares. They cannot withstand it long, wincing, backing away. Their relief is a palpable thing to Hux, though the general pays it only the scarcest of heeds. Already he turns to the chamber opened before him. Few would call such a man a coward. But there are even fewer still who would walk willingly into the opened maw of such disaster._

_For it is a disaster here: one different to that of the ship beyond this room, but epic in its own scope. Pain radiates out from said chamber, and though it is not his own even the general’s step falters at the power of it. It spills over from the body laid before him, lone figure in a room too big for sole occupancy, given the crowded state of every other inch of the ship. But no other would share this room. The general himself stands here only by sheer force of will – Hux himself would have turned and fled, if he but could._

_But the general’s fury holds them both here. The cold eyes fix upon the body, one almost entirely naked; he wears only the briefest of underwear, to protect what little dignity could conceivably remain to a man in such a state. The bacta patches applied to vast swathes of his skin are already bleeding and broken, their haphazard state more to do with the heavy breathing of an almost exhausted man than the staff themselves. Hux knows suddenly from the general’s thoughts that they had had him in the tank originally. Ren had been blessedly unconscious when brought in._

_But of course it had not lasted._

_The general’s boots click fiercely at the heel as he steps closer. “Calmed down now, have we?” His laugh is mocking, but then almost astonishingly careless in this aching ruin of a room. “Was the absolute ruin of Starkiller not enough, that you now have to rip apart my star destroyer, too?”_

_The dark eyes have an alarmingly clarity to them, where the head swivels to focus upon him. Even had he accepted any sedatives before, they are clearly long gone now. But the voice is a ruin: dry, hoarse, coming as if ripped from his throat._

_“It’s not your ship.”_

_He snorts. “Perhaps not anymore.” It’s only a statement, the agony of it powerfully repressed. Hux still knows it. From the look in Ren’s strange eyes he suspects the other man does too, even as the general speaks light and deadly. “But I have not been relieved of command. Not yet,” he says, and he’s smiling utterly without humour when he adds, “she is still mine, for now.”_

_Unspoken, he adds:_ and so are you _._

_Ren turns his head abruptly. “I don’t want you here.” One hand rises as if to gesture him violently away; it barely trembles before falling useless to his bleeding side. “Get_ out _.”_

_The general does not move. Hux can feel the cold slow spread of that cruel smile. “But you called for me.”_

_“I did no such thing! Those fools…”_

_“Those_ fools _have sense enough to realise only one person might control Kylo Ren. And that person is not Kylo Ren himself.”_

_There’s something damp and darker than even the void in those eyes when Ren looks back, face a twisted rictus; for the first time, Hux_ sees _the long cauterised wound that bisects his features into lopsided halves, and his stomach lurches; he has no idea how he had not seen it before._

_And when Ren speaks, it is slurring now, bitter and harsh. “I belong to Snoke, not you.”_

_The general takes one more step forward. “Snoke doesn’t want you.”_

_“He called me back!”_

_The great body, as tattered now as the robes long since stripped away, struggles to sit up, to give the breathless words some force; about them, the air is thick and charged, the taste of ozone reminding Hux of an ion cannon on the brink of detonation. And the general actually_ laughs _, low and light._

_“Has he ever struck you as the type to leave failure unpunished?” he says, almost gentle. In return Ren’s face folds in upon itself, the collapse catastrophic and complete. His eyes are clenched closed, his body very still now._

_And he speaks so low that Hux must struggle to make out the words, even though the general makes no visible effort to do the same. “Then why do_ you _go back to him?”_

_“I can’t bargain for my life with any voice other than my own.” The gloved hands have moved back to the small of his back, held there now in loose parade stance. “And I am no coward. I don’t run from my responsibilities.”_

_Ren is silent for what seems a long time. “But he’ll kill you,” he whispers, and Hux cannot decipher what the blankness of those words might mean. The general does not even try, turning away, back to the door that is really no such thing any longer._

_“I have work to do.” He does not look back. “Allow the staff to do what they must to make their repairs. Leader Snoke is waiting for you.”_

_But the general does not go far. The air about them feels suddenly electrified, almost magnetic – and then he cannot move, held still by some unseen force. But is an utterly_ known _force._

_The general does not fight it, but his voice is a cold dagger between them. “Let me go.”_

_“No.”_

_“_ Ren _.”_

_And his voice rises, sudden hysteria. “He can’t have you!” And then: biting, bruising, breaking: “You’re_ mine _.”_

_And the general wrenches free, turns around in utter fury. Ren’s power has much diminished. Hux still isn’t certain the man hadn’t just let the general go. The distinction doesn’t seem to make any difference to him, given the general has crossed the floor with dizzying speed, hands over him, holding him down, staring into the ruins of his face with perfect fury._

_And Hux must look upon the same thing, even as he wishes for nothing more to be free of this dream, and whatever cruel reality it echoes. While it had never beautiful, that face is become something twisted and broken now. Hux knows this even before he looks into those dark eyes and sees the haunted expanse of deadspace. The ruins of what had been there before. The Hosnian system, its utter destruction a moment of terror frozen into the cold vacuum of uncaring space._

_“No,” he says, and it’s almost pleasant, almost conversational, even as one hand presses lightly against the hyoid bone of a tight throat. “No, I am_ not _yours. I never will be.”_

_“Hux—”_

_The word becomes a howl; the general’s other hand has moved down, swift across his side, stopping only where it might press with vicious force into the wound ripped open by the bowcaster blast. The ooze of bacta and blood increases by the moment, accompanied now by only a low moan of agony. With a sneer, the general draws back, looks with disgust to the ruin of his glove. And even as Ren curves beneath him, trying unsuccessfully to curl around the agony of his abdomen, the general moves onward. The gloved fingers skate over the tight and taut muscles of his thighs, dipping into the underwear, closing tight around the soft mass of his cock._

_“Is this what you want, you petulant child?” He gives a rough jerk, lubricated only by the most unspeakable concoction of fluids. And his voice hisses, lips curled around bared teeth. “Is this distraction enough for you? Do you really just want me abandon the reparations of the disaster you left me, and baby you through recovery?”_

_Ren snarls, fight returning to him, bucking his hips. “Get your hand off me!”_

_But the general has seated himself, and knows no surrender. “No.” His hand moves again, leather all but scraping along sensitive flesh. “If you want me to stop, then_ stop me _.”_

_Hux’s own stomach is a roiling mass as he feels Ren hardening beneath the general’s crazed touch. And the man’s hands fist in the sheets, mouth twisting in a terrible rictus of sudden agony, back arching. The general rides him with grim purpose, even as the head falls back, Ren’s breathing coming so hard Hux cannot believe he is not choking. It’s pain – but terribly, something very close to pleasure. There seems no difference between the two here and now. And the general keeps his hand around his cock, jacking him without any thought to what would make him happy._

_Ren writhes on the bed, dark hair stellate disaster against the clean starched linen of the bed. It must be painful for him; what little lubrication there had been is long gone now, save the leak of pre-come from the angry flush of his cockhead. And then, strangely, even as Ren’s hips begin to move in rhythm with the man’s hand, following, not fighting – the general begins to slow. Begins to stop._

_Ren’s eyes open, bloodshot misery, his lips twisted in petulant fury. “What are you doing now?”_

_One hand rears back, takes him hand across the face. “I’m tired.” The general is rising even as Ren lies still and stunned in the wake of the blow. “I’m so sick and tired of you,” he adds, and when Ren’s mouth opens, he actually kicks the leg of the bed, jolting the entire construction in agonising shudder. “Just shut up, Ren. Shut up and let me have this.”_

_Standing at the disgraced knight’s beside, the similarly disgraced general begins his endgame. Boots, trousers, underwear: all are taken off, put carefully and quickly aside. His jacket he leaves hanging open; the shirt beneath, too. The gloves remain on his hands. Turning to one of the cabinets, he wrenches the door nearly off its hinges, takes a bottle and cracks its seal, pouring the contents all over his hands. Bacta, cold but warming by the moment, can hardly be the most advisable of lubricants. But at least it will work against damage even as it is wrought._

_When he turns back to Ren, there is something very close to fear in his watchful eyes. But he does not move. Hux cannot be sure he even can. The general doesn’t give a damn either way, one hand around his cock again. It pulls, demands; and two of his own fingers slide back, slip into himself with scarcely a second thought._

_“What is this?” Ren croaks, and the general laughs, high and hysterical. For the first time, Hux realises that this is what going mad feels like._

_“I haven’t eaten. I haven’t slept. Not since Starkiller fell. All I’ve done is clean up after you.” He clambers up onto the gurney again with a surprising grace, knees digging into the divots of his waist, ankles hitched around his knees. Then he pokes him hard in the chest, but a moment from the hammering uneven beat of the knight’s great heart. “And **you** , all you’ve done is make this worse!” He reaches behind him, seizes the cock in his hand. “You can’t even lie still,” he taunts, and then his face contorts. “Stop _moving _, you idiot.”_

_The general lowers himself – too fast, too harsh. The pain of it has Hux gasping to echo the general, whose head is thrown back, eyes wide, almost startled. It is the only thing breaking him free of the trance which has become his entire existence since he had dragged Ren from Starkiller._

_Beneath him, Ren draws a sobbing breath – and then, incredibly, he laughs. “Is this the only way you can prove yourself?” His hips jolt upward, very nearly toppling the still general. “How powerful can you really be, with my dick up your ass when I’m lying here half-dead?”_

_The man lurches forward, hands digging deep into his shoulders. “Half-dead?” he hisses.  “You could have killed me with a thought. You still could.” Again he reaches down, hand digging one more time into the bowcaster wound. Ren’s body arches like livewire, mouth opened on unvoiced scream. But he does not throw him off. And the general rises up, pushes down, and Hux can feel his rising pleasure in the mocking words. “You_ want _this.”_

_“Get off me!”_

_“No.” And he pushes down, harder; the ache of it burns low in his abdomen, his dick already hard and aching. He’s drifting away, exhaustion and despair blurring with his pleasure. Ren’s face floats before him, furious and twisted – eyes reddened, skin translucent white, like the arm of a galaxy seen across a night sky._

_But his rise and fall does not stop, endless cycle, a perfect circle that will not be broken. “Tricked by a traitor. Defeated by a scavenger.” His laughter echoes about the chamber. “And now: the fuck toy of a general. All because you couldn’t kill your father without destroying everything that was worth anything about yourself.”_

_Hux goes very still. This memory is new, this memory is—_

_But the death of Han Solo at the hands of his erstwhile son is stolen, snatched away by fresh action; Ren is snarling, surging upward. And the general is smiling, bland and yet brilliant, as he reaches forward with one hand. There, it cradles his face for a moment, pausing Ren – and then fingers and nails dig into the cauterised tissue of the wound across his face. A high-pitched gasp, escapes, so close to a scream. When the general clenches tighter, the sound sharpens. Again, a pause: Ren’s eyes are blank, and the general is almost delighted. His hips grind back, and then: he is riding him even as Ren sobs, his face a mess of blood and bacta and stinging saltwater._

_Hux wants out. He cannot stand this. The general still moves and now Ren does not, and desperately he clenches his eyes shut, even as he cannot escape the feedback loop of the general’s mind, his pleasure and his madness and his pain, and he’s desperate, turning back to reality; clawing,_

 

*****

 

climbing out of the dream, gasping, chest heaving for air that did not appear to be available.

Hux found himself in his own body again, one drenched in sweat. The too-hot air of the moon seemed cast over him like a shroud, clammy and harsh against pale skin. And he clawed at the light sleeping shirt, loosening the damned thing until he could throw it to the floor. The desire to cast his trousers to the same fate came strong, but – the memory of the general, of his motion upon the broken mind, the bleeding body beneath him. Half-hard in his trousers, Hux shoved one hand to his mouth, barely suppressing the scream that threatened. And the nausea pressed relentlessly on, the bitter lump of gall lodged to choking point in his throat.

A knock shook the door to its archaic hinges – but then it had been more a thump, a fisted hand falling hard against the thick wood. As it rattled onward Hux lay very still upon his pallet, staring upward, not answering. But he didn’t need to call, to ask who it was. He already knew.

The thump came again – far harder this time, as if he might dent even such thick worksmanship. As if a sleepwalker Hux rose, crossing the floor; it alternated between the raspy woven straw of the mats and hard stone, that latter far too cold against even his overheated flesh. Flicking the lock, Hux pushed the door open, found exactly what he had expected: a hulking figure in the darkness, no light in his hands, or in the black eyes that stared directly into his soul.

“Ren.”

A great tremor moved through him, pulsing powerful quake that moved across the void of space itself. Even in the dim light Hux could see so clear the incredulousness of his expression, already swiftly morphing into fresh alien anger.

“ _What_ did you call me?”

But Hux felt no fear. He remembered all too well how that body had felt beneath his own – his own hands as claws, nails dug deep as blood welled over his skin. There could never be need for fear, not when he knew how to turn it to his own desire.

And then, again, that sickness: it hit him full force low in the gut, his body turned chill, head suddenly swimming and spinning. With hand over his mouth, Hux turned away, bent double over a churning stomach.

“…Hux?”

And that small voice was not the man the general had put down. “ _Kylo_ ,” he whispered, and now he turned back. Kylo still stood before him – and it _was_ Kylo, even if he seemed smaller, somehow. As if something unseen had been bled from him. With hands made of thumbs Hux fumbled for the flintbox and lantern. The acrid scent of hydrocarbon came as a very nearly comforting thing, even as he took his time about lighting the damned thing. And then, for a long moment, he only stared into the small dancing flame. Much as it shamed him, Hux had become almost afraid to turn around.

But Kylo remained there, still and silent. Closing his eyes, gritting his teeth, Hux dug deep into himself, searching out something like frank mettle. Kylo had come to _him_ , after all, desperately seeking aid: a somnambulist, still trapped within the dream Hux himself had barely escaped from.

It took more courage than he knew he might ever possess to walk forward, each step leaden, uncertain. One rising hand came at last to rest upon that mask-still face. Upon the same place where the saber wound had left him mutilated and branded. Kylo flinched, but Hux pressed down: and there he found only clear skin, for all it was clammy with sweat. Yet it still held a dreadful chill despite the heat of the humid air, even in this encompassing darkness.

He had still not moved. Kylo instead stood with head bowed, hands fisted. And yes, Kylo had come looking for him, but suddenly it was as if Hux had missed their meeting, their single moment of absolute convergence. Even now he drifted away from what little anchor Hux could not provide, thrusting him into the dark void of a space that he could never hope to cross, not as he was now.

“Kylo,” he said, soft voice too loud in such preternatural silence. Even with one wall open to the sky and earth beyond, Hux could make out no exterior sound at all. It left him with nothing but his own heartbeat in his ears, and Kylo’s harsh breath: laboured and too quick, something like a sob bubbling under each gasping sigh. It held no words, only purest misery.

He supposed, in some clinical and detached part of his mind, that it might be a panic attack. He recalled having once had the experience himself, though he had certainly never been quite as dramatic as all this. And he had no real idea of how to stop it, or treat it. All he’d been able to do in his own case was push it down, deny it reality, drowning deep the entire thing in his own desperation to be _better_.

Shifting the hand still upon Kylo’s face down to cradle his jaw, Hux pressed it slowly upward, looked into dark eyes that seemed a thousand lightyears away. He remembered his own experience bitterly well. Of course it had been in the senate buildings, but not even a specific thing had set it off. It had been a long series of weeks, each with their own small dramas. There hadn’t been one moment that had marked their culmination. But in the middle of a meeting he had taken to his feet, stepped quickly through the dim light of someone else’s presentation, and he had just – _left_.

Nobody had followed him. Even if they had, he likely would not have seen them: walking down the corridor at a too-quick clip, blind and deaf to anything and everything around him. He hadn’t even realised it was the ‘fresher he aimed for until he moved inside, shutting the door tight against the world beyond. He hadn’t bothered with the light. It left him with nothing but darkness, save for what little reached in under the space beneath the door. It had had a curve to it, he remembered: brightest at its middle, like silver sunrise over a dark horizon. In the end he’d figured it for something closer to the event horizon of a black hole. Certainly it had felt like he was falling, but with no chance of respite. He would never hit the bottom. He would never be released. He would just remain in endless freefall, forever.

“ _Kylo_.”

The name might have been an invocation: he blinked, eyes turning wild, filled with images of some life he had never lived. “I killed him!” Choking, hands rising, he shoved at Hux’s own. But Hux had pressed them now about his jaw, holding him still, never breaking their gaze. In return Kylo’s hands grasped hard around his wrists, sure to leave a manacle of bruises, in time.

“Hux,” he said, and clenched tighter still. “Hux, I killed my _father_.”

“Kylo.” Even though they looked into each other’s eyes, he had the uncomfortable sensation that Kylo stared right through him. “You didn’t.” And then, when he said nothing, a shake. “He’s alive.”

Now he moaned, eyes closing in fierce scrunch. “But I _did_.” He tried to shake his head, went nowhere with Hux’s hands upon him. “In some other reality, some other time: I _killed_ him!”

“Not here.” How he ached to slap him. “Not now.” Instead he leaned close, forehead to forehead, glaring fit to light a fire. “Not _ever_.”

His eyes opened, the voice turned hushed, hoarse. “You can’t promise me that.”

He gritted his teeth, lip curled. “Watch me.”

Those cursed eyes searched his then, their scrutiny leaving him feeling stripped raw. And Hux couldn’t be sure what he found. But barely more than half a minute later had Kylo sagging back, shaking his head, his entire body gone limp. Something had been taken from him – some demon exorcised, for all Hux had not seen its passing. And he was shivering, again, despite the damnable heat of this tiny tropical moon.

But there was still work to do. The gangling body had never seemed so long, so _apparent_ : they moved only in slow pacing walk as Hux guided him out of the room, and then down. When seated on the wooden edge, it left the forest but a few metres away; the valley stretched out below, a bowl full of stars. Leaving him there, Hux turned. A hand caught about his wrist, again. Wincing at the fresh sensation of bruising yet to come, a second bracelet of purple and deep night-sky blue, Hux looked down, nearly lost himself again in those damnable eyes.

“Don’t go.”

Wrenching his arm back didn’t break Kylo’s grip. “It is _my_ room, Kylo.” When that still was not enough to earn his freedom: “I’m just getting you some water.” Then, almost desperate, “And I need a new a shirt.”

Something flickered in his dark eyes as, for the first time, they actually _looked_ at Hux; they shone terribly bright despite the darkness. And they passed very slow over a view he had wanted, but hours ago. But the dream remained: of the general’s opened shirt, his face twisted in fury as he’d moved upon the prone body of the shamed knight beneath him.

Kylo looked away. His voice had turned very small. “Thank you.”

Hux said nothing as he moved back inside. His own blood had become like ice, even as his skin prickled with warm sweat. It had never been like this in Coruscant, with its scheduled weather and rigidly controlled atmosphere. Even Arkanis, with its constant rain, had never had the heat to match anything so suffocating as this.

But he felt glad, all the same. It would never be his place – not with his pale skin and bright hair, and his preference for clothes that didn’t wilt and crease within thirty seconds of being put on. The brief flickering light of the lantern, so unlike the reliable control of his home, his workspace. And then even the water he poured into a toothglass, taken from a carafe he’d taken from the well in the courtyard, given the temple had no plumbing to speak of.

This was not his place, no. As he moved back out onto the veranda, he supposed that for all his power, it would never be Kylo’s, either. But they were here, now, and perhaps that said something for where they might be, one day.

_Together_.

Kylo’s hand still had that shake to it when Hux offered him the glass. Clumsy fingers couldn’t hold on; Hux winced, waited for the crash. But it stilled before the moment of disaster, half over-turned, water in sloshing arc. Both had stopped upon the air itself. The water moved first, reversing back into the glass with elegant swiftness, the glass now steady in Kylo’s hands, brought down to be held at the level of his hips. But he only stared into the clear depths, took no drink. Already he appeared calmer. Sturdier.

Without thinking, Hux laced his hands together before his hips. They would have been shaking, if not for how tight he had folded them together. And he shifted in the silence, the roughspun shirt harsh against overheated skin. But it was not the same silence of before. That had vanished, as if after a storm. There remained instead the sound of night creatures about their work, brief rustle of wind through the broad-leafed trees, the low buzz of insects. He could even make out the faint ghost of light, moving; fireflies, perhaps. He’d never seen a real one. A live one. Not outside of holos, and the caverns of his own imagination.

And with that Kylo gave a low sigh. It came steady enough, though the words held a light patina of panic not yet entirely banished. “…you were so _angry_ at me.”

Hux’s words came flat, unyielding and true. “That was the general. I wouldn’t hurt you like that.”

But the haunted eyes told the remembered story of a place where that would have been the most banal of lies. “But…what if I _wanted_ you to?”

“Kylo—”

“I liked it.” And he laughed, wild and miserable, the terrible echo of a broken body beneath bitter hands. “Part of me _liked_ it.”

Again Hux found himself staring at his hands, having nowhere else to go. The memory of it burned with bitter bright flame: how it had felt, to have so much power trembling beneath his furious grip. And his own body, half-naked but that of a general still, relishing the burn as he’d taken the oversized cock into himself. It had been nothing but his own desire, his own demands. Ren could have denied the general anything. But he had instead given the man everything.

“When I said I wasn’t right. When I was a kid.” Kylo paused, painfully so. “I…heard voices. _A_ voice. In my head. All the time.” Then, sudden, vicious and panicked both: “I’m not crazy. Don’t look at me like I’m _crazy_.”

Though the heightened emotion of the moment pounded in his blood like a second wild heartbeat, Hux spoke slow, careful, very nearly mild. “I wasn’t.”

At first, Kylo did nothing more than stare – the whites of his eyes circled the blown pupils, leaving him looking like nothing so much as a maddened feral beast. And Hux had never seen such a thing – save through the boundaries and borders of the city’s zoological gardens. Safe and sound and so far from the true dangers of the worlds beyond the Core.

And then Kylo turned violent and away, eyes snapping down to the glass in his hand. He looked upon it as if it were an alien artefact, unknown and infuriating; with an explosion of fierce movement he thrust his head and the vessel back, long throat working, gulping at the water which still ran in rivulets down jaw and into the vee of his sleeping shirt.

And then, when it was over: he cast the thing violently aside; Hux couldn’t hold back a flinch, waiting for the inevitable crash. But it did not come. As if guided by an unseen hand, it instead gently floated down to a rest upon the floor. But Kylo paid the entire action what seemed to be no heed whatsoever, staring forward again with blind purpose. When Hux followed his gaze, half-fearful of what might be found there, he found only the stars of Yavin 4: bright unfamiliar patterns in an unfamiliar sky.

With skin prickling again, Hux looked back to the glass. It sat silent and motionless now, unmoving and unmoved. The general had pressed himself up against that power, challenged it, beaten it down into something for his own satisfaction. Hux could only stare at this the most mundane use of it, and feel his abdomen clench and his heart twist in knots that might never be undone.

“You said your aunt helped,” he said, voice a tight coiled spring destined only to backfire on the one who primed it. “But did you ever…”

“What?”

Kylo sounded somewhere terribly far away. For all Hux knew, he actually was. Taking a deep breath, one that still didn’t manage to get him anywhere enough oxygen for basic function, Hux looked to him, found still the dark head turned to the sky.

“Did you ever tell them how it _really_ was?” he asked, slow. “Not just that it existed. But that it was…”

Kylo snorted, voice a low pulse, like sudden arterial gout. “Tearing me apart, you mean?”

It was hard to swallow against the sandpaper scrape of his throat. “And was it?”

His hands clenched to abrupt fists – and for a bright bleeding moment, Hux thought Kylo might put one through the wall. Or his face.

Then he sighed, head bowed, hands pale and still at his sides. “Sometimes I don’t know how I survived it,” he whispered, and when he face turned up to the starlit sky, it seemed a pale mask, still and silent. “Sometimes I think I wasn’t even supposed to. But I did. I _did_.” And when he turned then to Hux, his eyes somehow managed to be both the brightest and the darkest parts of his room. “I told them some of it, I guess. Not all of it. They wouldn’t have understood.”

Unspoken words followed: _but you do._ They filled Hux to bursting with the sudden desire to take to his feet, to run into the jungle and keep moving until his legs gave way and his lungs gave out, until he lay prone and fallen in the place that would become his grave.

But he did not move. There seemed no point, when he had nowhere else to go. “Did they ever tell you what it was?”

“No. I don’t think they ever knew. I don’t think they know even now, what it _really_ was.” Now his long legs twitched; he stretched them out before him, mouth twisted in a half-pained grimace as he folded forward in half, rubbed one thumb along his calf. “But Uncle Luke always told me, if I heard it again, to tell him.”

Hux’s own hands spasmed, but did not move. “And have you heard it again?”

Kylo stilled. “No.”

It hung there, for a moment – but when Kylo chose not to speak again, Hux could not let it go. Not with the fall it promised. “You don’t sound sure.”

And now Kylo drew his legs back in, folded them tailor-style beneath himself; his flexibility always startled Hux, for all it was completely natural, given his training and lifestyle. But when Kylo shook his head, Hux could focus on nothing else but the troubled depths of his strange eyes.

“There’s…a disturbance. In the Force.”

“Oh, _here_ we go again.”

“It’s not a joke.” He even managed to sound somewhere between gloating and apologetic when he added, “And you’re a part of it now, anyway.”

Hux closed his eyes. It didn’t help. It never would. “The dreams.”

“The dreams,” he repeated, though his silence didn’t last long. “If it makes you feel any better, you’re probably not the only one. A lot of people are probably…troubled, now.”

And in the darkness of his mind he saw only the remembered image of Nahani Gillen, lovely and silent before the city of Coruscant, slim silhouette against the lurking shadow of some unseen beast.

Hux opened his eyes, found little brightness to blink back against. “It’s that bad.”

“Yeah.” Now he stretched out his arms behind him, bracing his weight upon the opened palms as he turned his face towards the sky. “Uncle Luke thinks you’re probably getting it worse than other non-sensitives, though. Because of me.”

In profile, his face became only all the more remarkable. “What, you’re projecting at me or something?”

“No. At least, not intentionally.” His lips curled around the thoughts, words coming slow and troubled. “It’s a…proximity thing, I guess. We’re kind of connected.”

“Because we fucked in another lifetime?”

His face shuttered, went very still. “I don’t want to talk about that right now.”

_That’s a change_ , he thought, sour and silent. But Hux knew better than to try and score points in a losing game. And the memory of the dream had turned his stomach again too, lazy and pressured and full.

“You’re not crazy, Kylo.”

Those words had him looking over at last, with a wry and lopsided smile. “Do you really believe that?”

This life had given Hux little to believe in – his family, his father, his future. He doubted the Force would have much to offer him, either. But the strangeness of this place suited them both, even if nothing else did – liminal, but not quite lonely.

“Yes,” he said, very quiet. “Yes, I really do believe that.”

Whether or not is was true didn’t even seem to matter, anymore. There was something different, now – in just sitting together. Being here. Hux was not familiar with the day cycle of Yavin 4, but from the quality of the light suspected dawn remained some way off; he did not think them near enough the equator for the shift to be so sudden.

“I could use a cigarette,” he said, utterly without thinking; the perplexed look this earned him from Kylo echoed his own sentiment exactly.

“You don’t smoke.”

“No.” And he sighed, allowed his hands to clench to light fists. “No, I don’t.”

And Kylo looked away. “But he does.”

Now, instead of the craving for a cigarra – Hux could taste upon his tongue only bile, and the sharp sting of bacta mixed with blood. Swallowing hard, resisting the urge to turn and spit, he held fiercely onto silence instead. Then, again without quite thinking, “The grand admiral doesn’t, either.”

“What?” Kylo’s eyes had turned vibroblade-sharp. “How do you know that?”

He snorted, though there was little enough scorn in it. “Call it a hunch.”

“I usually call it the Force.”

This time he just sighed, stretched his own legs out before him, bare toes pointed in the starlight. “While I’m quite willing to accept its strong presence in _your_ life, Kylo,” he said, eyes fixed upon one bright star, “I can’t say that I myself require a close personal relationship with the Force.”

“It’s beautiful.”

He said it so slow, so reverent; it almost hurt him to hear it. “What?”

“When it’s not sad. It’s beautiful.” And Kylo had turned to him now, dark eyes seeming to fill the world. “I could show you.”

Without quite realising it, Hux found he’d actually begun to lean away from him, as if retreating from some great and terrible source of burning heat. “Kylo. You’re exhausted. Overwrought.” Already he steadied his muscles to rise, to move yet further away. “You need to sleep.”

“I’m going to show you.” Determined, undeterred – Kylo’s hand reached out, bridged the gap between them. And the long blunt fingers closed in and around his own, the heat of him like a brand.

But Hux did not pull back. He followed instead Kylo’s gaze, without even looking back for a point of reference. The empty glass sat just where it had been abandoned, but Kylo’s intense gaze had once more locked upon the thing. And Hux trembled beneath his touch – trembled beneath the _force_ of it. For this must have been the Force: a sudden livewire explosion along every nerve and tendon, his muscles alight, his entire arm become an alien burning thing. Their palms opened, blooming dual flower – and the waterglass rose, light as a feather upon the air, tremulous and alone.

“Stop it,” Hux whispered. And he did not even realise Kylo had come so close; his answer vibrated along his skin, velvet-soft and so very lovely.

“Can you feel it?”

“Of course I can _feel_ it!” Hux clenched his eyes shut, words hissing out between gritted teeth. “It _hurts_.”

The shattering of the glass broke whatever spell it was – had it been anything so mundane as a spell. And Kylo reared back, hands now clenched in his lap, eyes downturned and voice as tight as the tremble of his words.

“It…it shouldn’t hurt.”

“Well, it _did_.”

It seemed as though his whole body fell to drooping, like a rainforest denied its most basic need. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“I don’t want to hurt you, either,” he said, sharp, and that was an entirely new variety of pain – because he could remember how _good_ it had felt, to do just precisely that. “Come on, then. Get up. Come lie down.”

That, at least, got his attention. “You’re letting me stay, then?”

“It’s probably for the best.”

Silence prickled between them for a moment; even in the shadows, Hux could see something about his expression that almost looked like shame. “I’m not sure I can sleep again. After that.”

With a low snort, Hux brushed himself off, even though it wasn’t as if he could have gathered much dust in such humid air. “I wasn’t really planning on sleep, myself.” And then, stiff with sudden rejection, “If you don’t want to stay—”

“I want to.” It came quick, tripping over itself. The next words were much smaller, though hardly less than sincere. “Thank you.”

With faint colour high in his cheeks, Hux turned away, and then frowned at the bed. Little more than a moderate pallet, it could hardly sustain them both. The room itself felt barely big enough; even the open wall could not truly dispel the stuffiness of the room, and the hanging lantern, small though it was, radiated additional heat. But the thought of dimming its flame turned his stomach, chilled his blood in all the wrong ways.

Hux only allowed himself a moment of debate. Then he reached down with renewed vigour, stripping the blankets back, grabbing the pillow as he straightened up again. It likely as not would prove to be less than comfortable. But it wasn’t as if either of them expected to sleep, anyway.

Kylo only watched him go about his wordless work, building a small nest upon the wooden planks of the veranda. As he sat back on his heels, surveying the improvised result, Hux felt somewhat surprised there were no insects seeking their blood. With that said, he hadn’t noticed them at all, anywhere about the temple. It could be the sweet scent of the lamp driving them back, perhaps. But with Kylo’s eyes upon him, Hux put his hands on his thighs, and pushed to his feet. Likely as not, it wasn’t so simple as all that. Nothing around here ever seemed to be.

“In you go.”

Something unspoken, unsaid – it moved between them even as Kylo himself did. And then he was on his knees, then on his back, in the closest approximation they had of Hux’s bed.

_This is a mistake_.

Hux made it all the same, unable to iron out the sudden stiffness of his muscles as he lay down beside him. Kylo displayed no such reticence, curling up at his back as one arm slid beneath his head in apparent parody of the pillow he kept otherwise all to himself. But Hux’s earlier hypothesis was already proving correct; in this humidity, the heat of that huge body proved unbearable. It should have been easy to shove him back and away, considering the circumstances. He never would have never allowed this, before. But he could not. Kylo was at this moment little more than an overgrown child, and one desperately in need of comfort.

_And you’re not that much older than he is, besides._

Hux still sighed. “It’s too warm, for this.”

Wordless, Kylo rolled onto his back. But he did not withdraw his arm. And Hux did not push it away. Instead one hand came to rest upon the muscle of his left biceps: a solid weight, warm, but not uncomfortably so. Even as he curled in on himself, Kylo’s arm came in cradling form about his chest, breath tickling light the fine downy hair at the nape of his neck. Hux knew that he must present a truly pathetic picture to any outsider. Certainly his father would have disowned him on the spot for such casually displayed weakness.

And yet he still could not bring himself to draw back and away.

“You never told me about the dreams of the Grand Admiral,” he said, so soft that for a moment he could kid himself that Kylo would not hear. “So…what happens, in them?”

He remained quiet for so long, breath even and slow, that Hux believed he had fallen asleep. “They’re…not like the dreams of the general.” Kylo sounded guarded – and unhappy, though Hux did not feel as though the emotion had been directed at him. “They’re…feelings, more than actual stories. Sensations. Like…the general and Kylo Ren. It’s like watching a holomovie. The Grand Admiral, well…it’s colour, on canvas. Light upon dark. Dark upon light. Shifting and strange.”

It left Hux almost afraid to ask the inevitable. “And what _feelings_ does he give you, specifically?”

“Sadness.” This answer was somehow worse than anything else. “I see you in white, beautiful and bright and shining, and somehow…I just feel sad.”

In the quiet they allowed, now, Hux could make out the distant movement of unseen animals. And he took a slow breath, tasted how strange it was: the heavy air of a tropical rainforest, pregnant with moisture, heavy with heat. He’d never have thought to know this. But mere weeks ago, he’d been in his office, watching Chadri Dio steal his work and name it his own, and all he’d had to worry about then was the method by which he’d slow murder the smarmy bastard.

“But then, if I was Grand Admiral,” Hux began, falling easily to slow, logical progression, “you never would have been born.”

“I would always have been born.” It might have been arrogance, perhaps. But Hux knew enough of Kylo now to hear the faintest hint of regret beneath the bravado. “It doesn’t matter what reality it is. I’m a Skywalker. It’s just the way of the galaxy.”

Hux only murmured a soft assent. Whatever this was, it had moved far beyond the realm of his own understanding. Instead he chose to stare out into the forest, to unanchor his mind and let it drift aimlessly on deceptively calm seas. It gave him no real sense of sleep, but: still he knew the passing of time.

It was a softer sound than Kylo’s even breaths that coaxed him back to full awareness. Rain fell against the thatched roof above their heads, already forming small waterfalls where it began to coast down. It already proved far heavier than what he had been accustomed to, as a child. Small as he had been, Hux still remembered many a night spent curled into the stiff starched sheets of a too-large bed, the ongoing pitter-patter of relentless rain upon the roof.

This rainfall might more accurately be termed a monsoon. With Kylo beside him now, Hux lay awake as he had then. But for the first time he knew an odd calm in it – with this warm body at his side, sleeping onward, utterly undisturbed. He did not have to worry about his father, in this house. Hux supposed he technically no longer had a father at all, besides.

Rising up on one elbow, Hux turned, looked down at his companion properly. Kylo slept on, curled into the sweaty warmth Hux had left behind. The peacefulness of his rest made him almost childish: the bulk of him somehow diminished, made small, leaving him for a moment hardly greater than Rey’s own age. But he could not help but wonder what it would look like – that fine white canvas of skin, painted fresh with blood and bruise and broken bone.

Hux turned away, mouth twisted in a grimace, nails curled into palms. The craving for a cigarette struck him as oddly violent, considering he’d never before had opportunity enough to savour such a filthy vice. But then, there might never have been a better time than now to start.

Even though he intended to dress, Hux did not take the time to wash first – even if he’d wanted to he would have needed to return to the well for fresh water. But he would not go out in sleeping clothes, even those borrowed. Instead he dressed himself in a fresh outfit of neutral tones, beige and brown and deep burnished orange. His own boots, black and shiny and so clearly of the city, sat very clearly at odds with everything else. In that they matched his uncertain step as he traversed the arcades and corridors that would take him back to the great central courtyard. Even in this darkness he still knew the shape of the rising pyramid in the distance, the faintest hint of dawn smudged all along the edges of the sky.

The covered walkways kept him dry. He realised that he would not be able to venture far beyond their cover, not if he wanted to stay that way. But it didn’t matter, in the end – at the terminus of the last one, Hux caught sight of a layered pavilion. It wasn’t one he’d seen before; given the size and shape, he figured it for a place of gathering, of joint meditation. But there was just one person there now, small and slight silhouette. Perhaps he should have let it lie. Hux moved forward all the same.

“What are you doing out here, Rey?”

She didn’t look up from her where sat cross-legged at the room’s centre, concentric patterns radiating out from beneath her in stellate grace. “Couldn’t sleep. The rain, you know?” Then, when he’d come close, had already taken a place by her side: “And I had a bad dream.”

Hux first came over hot, and then very cold. Dreamsharing with _Rey_ …Kylo could scarcely cope with them at seventeen. He could not bear to consider what an eight year old girl would make of the disastrous relationship he had just seen play out in brilliant violent detail inside his own head.

But she spoke first, chewing absently on her lower lip, eyes so dark as to be almost brown in the dim civil dawn. “It was about Uncle Han.”

His own voice croaked, on the return. “Oh?”

And yet she hardly seemed to notice, eyes fixed and far away, mired deep in some vision he could not help but be glad he could not himself see. “I was watching. From up high.” And she took a deep breath, held it tight, didn’t seem to let go even when the words came out, all in a rush. “It was…inside a big building. Some sort of base, I think. It was snowing outside. I couldn’t see it, but I knew it. I’d been outside. It was so cold. It _hurt_.”

“Rey—”

But she held a hand up, the gesture oddly mature; for moment she seemed a wizened old woman, bent and shrunk with great age. “Ben was there too,” she went on, forehead folded, lips pursed, as if she recited the story before some grand jury and had to get every detail perfectly correct. “Standing on this catwalk, _thing_ , across the whole space. I couldn’t see the bottom of the room.” Now when she drew a deep breath, it hitched on an obvious sob. “Uncle Han was with him.”

“ _Rey_.”

But he did not reach out for her, much as convention told him that he should. And when she glanced to him, the expression she wore could almost have been pitying. Barely a moment passed before she glanced away again, and back to the clear cool skies far above them both.

“Ben didn’t know me,” she whispered, and something twisted in her voice then, tearing and tight. “And I didn’t know _him_. Like…I knew it was Ben. But then I _didn’t_. I didn’t know he was my cousin. That he was _mine_.”

Hux closed his eyes, felt the scratch of saltwater even though they remained utterly dry. The general had known. The general had _seen_. And then the general had put his hands on Kylo Ren and—

“There’s something wrong in the Force.” Rey spoke, soft, too terribly certain. “I know I’m just little. But I _know_ it.”

And Brendol Hux Jr. had no idea what could be said to that. Yet it seemed Rey had expected no answer, because she turned to him as he opened his eyes, took his much larger hands in her own, and squeezed tight.

“But we can fix it.” Even in the dim gloom, he could make out the bright gold flecks in her hazel eyes, now. “Because that’s what we’re here for.”

The words sounded alien, peculiar, as if spoken from great distance. “Do you really think so?”

“I know so.” And she smiled, bright and sudden as equatorial dawn. “And I think _you_ know it, too.”

“I don’t know anything about the Force.”

“But you know Ben.” She patted his hands, again. “That’s enough.” And then she curled in close to his side, small and warm and so dreadfully solid, absolutely real as she sighed, said with contented certainty, “it’s always been enough.”

Even as she closed her eyes, settling to something dangerously like sleep, Hux could only look into the distance. Already the bright beginnings of sunrise burned his eyes, made it hard to see anything at all.

_But it’s not Ben I know_ , he thought, Rey still a drowsing weight on his left side. _I only know Kylo_.

And even in the heat of the air, Hux shivered.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...so, I managed to write _another_ chapter, and given that it's been less than a month since the last AND I know how the epilogue goes, I might actually just finish this...? I'm still not sure how many more chapters there are to go, though, so we'll see. I _do_ have a little bee in my bonnet about finishing this, though, so maybe we'll all get there in the end.
> 
> At any rate, if you're here and reading, thank you so much for sticking with me. It means a lot, especially as this is such a niche Hux-centric story, but...it's the story my brain gave me. So. <3 I'm trying to be more positive about things this year, so...I'll keep writing, and see where this goes.
> 
> ETA: I can't believe I forgot to do this, but @heartfullofrain did the most _amazing_ [gifset](https://heartfullofrain.tumblr.com/post/154342900849/inspired-by-claricechiarasorchas-amazing-fic) to go with this fic, and I adore it. I can't begin to explain how much I shrieked when I saw it. Which I _didn't_ , because I was at work, but I went so red my workmates were all "what's WRONG" and I was like "NOTHING" but grinned like a fool for the rest of the day. <3
> 
> Also, the lovely @noxogoth literally finished a commission I'd asked of her just after I published this, so: [HERE IT IS](https://noxogoth.tumblr.com/post/155552310650/it-should-have-been-easy-to-shove-him-back-and), and it's a scene from the previous chapter. Because the boys lying together in a soft and liminal moment is my fucking kryptonite, okay. It's just...everything I hoped for, and more. :D

When he woke, it was to find the world still wet with rain and rising steam. But even in such sticky heat it appeared new, refreshed, redone. Hux himself did not feel to be any of those things, save maybe for hot and damp.

Turning back from his contemplation of the world beyond his borrowed room, he looked down to the wooden boards. Kylo, large lanky frame now all but cocooned in the blankets, lay yet sleeping. Exhaustion had taken him low, and apparently still held him there. Even as Hux stared, he did not stir, that strange beauty as distant and silent as the stars slowly going out overhead. Something shifted, hungry and helpless, low in his abdomen. Hux closed his eyes, breathed through his nose. The earlier dreams had been one thing. They had been another life, another reality – albeit one entangled with his own, and that not by his own will. But to think of such things now, when he had seen the general bring his knight so low…

The guest ‘fresher lurked not far down the corridor. Alone in the half-dark of it, Hux drew cool water from the bucket, wetting his skin to damp sheen. Rubbing the soap between his palms, he created light lather. There he paused, breath coming too quick, eyes tightly closed, the prickling heat of his groin a short sharp demand. When his hand closed around his cock, he felt deep guilt. But he also knew relief. And in that, arousal reigned supreme.

It didn’t take long. His mind, thankfully, conjured up no real images. Instead he found himself overwhelmed by snatches of sound, and of sight. With his mind so overtaken, there was no room for thought itself; instead he came quick, hard, and found himself utterly unsatisfied. With jaw set, he turned back to the bucket. The water level sat terribly low, but Hux rinsed himself off entirely. And then, he started all over again.

Returning to his room, he found that sometime in the interim Kylo had woken, and was now gone. For a long moment he stood in stillness, struck hard by the terrible suspicion that somehow Kylo had _known_ – that Kylo had _felt_ Hux take that reluctant pleasure in the memory of his other self’s degradation.

But they shared dreams, not active thoughts. And Hux shook his head, turned to the small trunk sitting across from his pallet. After searching through the borrowed clothes stored neatly within, Hux took his time about getting dressed. Ordering himself had always been familiar ritual, both before and after the Order; he gave himself to it willingly, and entire.

But he had barely finished the task to his exacting standards when there came a hesitant knock on the door. He sighed, held himself to stillness. The door opened behind him all the same, a figure slipping silently inside. His guilt must have given him away. He wondered if it always would.

Stepping close beside him, Kylo didn’t wait for his late answer. Given he still didn’t feel quite ready for words just yet, Hux kept his thoughts about that to himself. But Kylo only sighed, looked down at his hands, opened before him.

“Don’t feel bad,” he said, sudden for all its quiet tone. “I did it, too.”

Hux’s own hands curled to loose fists at his sides, his face turned away. “I didn’t need to know that.”

But when Kylo said nothing in immediate return, Hux found he could not look away for long. In the soft golden light of earliest dawn, Kylo’s features held a striking age that full light would no doubt steal away again. But his dark eyes – those would not change, would not lose their sheen of shadow. And there was no bawdiness to him now when he said, almost too gentle, “Didn’t you?”

“I…” He gathered his upper lip beneath the lower, then let it go on a sigh. “Kylo,” he said, even as he wondered how old he himself appeared in such liminal light, “does it even _matter_?”

“I think it does.” Then he blinked, two times, too quick. “Do you think he loves him?”

“What?”

His throat worked in sharp swallow, eyes dropping away. “The general,” he said, and his face turned back to the sky, caught again what little light was yet there. “Do you think he loves Kylo Ren?”

The words came hard, drawn like sand over skin. “At this point, I hardly think that matters, either.”

“It matters to me.”

“ _Kylo_.” But there he paused, not even quite knowing what it was that he warned Kylo against. And then he realised he had no idea what to say at all. Instead he raised his right hand, rubbed the knuckles first into one eye, then shifted to the other. When he looked up again, Hux found Kylo a blur of light and dark.

“I…am in the general’s mind, yes,” he began, with true difficulty. “But he doesn’t know I’m there. And his thoughts…” He trailed off, felt a flare of odd and impotent fury. “I don’t know what it’s like for you, inside _my_ mind. But…I can’t imagine you have immediate access to everything of me. If that makes any sense.”

Turning away from the lightening sky, and the still-dark forest beneath, Kylo leaned against the stone frame of the open wall. There, with arms crossed too tight over his broadening chest, he first pursed his lips. Then, he blew out a short and sharp breath. “It makes sense,” he admitted, and gave him a wry half-smile. “Probably more than you know, really. Because you’re right. Mind-reading isn’t like picking up a holopad and just flicking through to whichever screen you want. There’s no search function. It’s possible to push deep into someone’s mind, sure. You can wrench what you want free, if you know how. But almost all of the ways to _do_ that…they can hurt.” His face turned away, voice now flat, almost alien. “And they can kill.”

Hux made no attempt to reply – only watching, only waiting. For what, he did not know. He supposed perhaps it didn’t matter. And in the end, Kylo gave another sigh, hunched forward over himself so unruly hair fell over his shuttered eyes.

“Surface thoughts are easiest,” he muttered, hands now pressed into the space between chest and biceps. “That’s just the most active part of your consciousness. And I would guess that’s what you get from the general.”

Hux found his own hands moving back behind him, fingers hooking together in something he dimly recognised as lazy parade rest. “I guess so,” he replied, very slow, even as he made no move to stand any other way. “It’s all…mostly what’s in front of him. Or other things that are raised by, or pertain to, the situations around him.”

When Kylo looked up, it was accusing in a way Hux could not quite understand. “But you still can’t tell if he loves him.”

“Kylo.” He meant to sound angry. It only came out tired. “What does it really matter?”

The tightening of his jaw spoke of words held fiercely back. Kylo never did say them aloud, instead looking away. Light had crested the horizon proper now, the ghost-like shimmer of distant Yavin beginning again to take on something of its true crimson cast.

“Even if he did love him,” Hux said, very quiet, “what he’s doing isn’t fair.” He laughed, then, utterly without humour. “I’m hardly a candidate for sainthood myself, but even I know what happened in that medbay…it wasn’t _right_.”

Kylo didn’t turn from the dawn. “But he’s _you_.”

“In another reality, if you are all to be believed.” The words twisted are they grew sharper still. “Unless you think _I_ could do that to _you_. Right here, and right now.” The ugliness of his tone shifted again to something deeper, darker. “Is _that_ what you want, Kylo?”

He stared, now, face fathomless and dark in fresh shadow, before looking back to the sky. “Maybe.” And then, almost too quiet: “If it’s all you have to offer.”

The urge to strike him across his idiot face took him hard, though not entirely by surprise. And he was not taken over by it for one simple reason: the haunted, hurting realisation that that, under everything else, was what made him the same person as the general. That had Hux turning away, entire body tensed and torn by the urge to run. To leave Kylo behind. To leave all of this madness to the Jedi, and those unfortunate enough to be loved by them.

_And to love them, in return._

“Hux.” He felt, rather than saw, the impotent hand reaching between them. “I’m _sorry_.”

If not for the fact Kylo sounded on the verge of tears, Hux might have walked away. Instead he turned back, and only watched as Kylo first lurched forward, and then gave up. Now seated upon the edge of the stripped pallet, he curved forward, head in his hands, shoulders hunched into hard tension.

“I don’t know what’s going on.” When he glanced up, his dark eyes had turned black and bleak. “And what I saw, it…”

Without really thinking of the motion, Hux sat down heavy at his side. “We should have stopped it. Long before now.” And even with the radiating heat of that great body, so close and so yearning, Hux tangled his fingers bruise-tight around one another, held firm in his own lap. “Whatever those two people became, they…they are not _us_.” Catching Kylo’s eye, he added with a finality he did not himself entirely feel, “We made different choices. We still _have_ different choices.”

“But what if that is who we are to become?” Something close to panic had entered his tone, turned it bitter and too quick. “What if we’re wrong? What if they aren’t different realities, but…our _future_?” When he laughed, it barked out, sharp and high. “You become the general. I become the knight. And then, somewhere down the line…”

Hux closed his eyes. The scent of victory had always been sweet to him, like blooming blood-roses and the ground after rain; he could feel the weight of white fabric, billowing from gilded epaulettes. The sound of the crowd was but a distant roar. What he held in his hands instead felt closer to reality, this orb and sceptre sculpted in his name, of his line, freshly born and coronated. And he sighed, inwards and out, and let it go. Such vision could but be so very strange, given that in dreams they had all only seen the grand admiral – and never Hux’s deepest most painful wish.

He opened them. “I don’t know a lot of the general’s mind,” he said, very quiet. “But I _do_ know he was born to command. Or at least, born to the First Order. He wasn’t removed from that environment, not the way I was.” Something between bitterness and relief coloured his next words. “He never knew anything different.”

Kylo’s plush lips had tightened to impossible line. “Are you _sure_?”

“Well. Maybe not as sure as I am of the fact that if I myself tried to return to the Order now, I’d never make general by thirty-one.”

The barely repressed anger of the words appeared to pass Kylo right by. “He was _thirty-one_ when he made general?”

“I…” For a second he floundered, uncertain in his own certainty. And then: “Yes. I think so.”

Hux did not like the look on Kylo’s face then. It managed to be something both taken aback, and uncomfortably intrigued. “Look,” he said, sharper than intended. “It’s morning, and I’m hungry. Are you going to feed me or not?”

Leaning back, Kylo allowed himself a faint grin; Hux still didn’t believe his earlier mood had quite dissipated. “Demanding little minx, aren’t you?”

“Call me a _minx_ again, Kylo, and I might just go spend all my time with Dameron and Rey.”

Much as he only rolled his eyes at the threat, Kylo at least did rise, before taking him down to the main congregation area of the temple complex. There they found themselves amongst a simple breakfast of unleavened bread, cooked on hot stones, and fresh fruit that apparently came from the loosely cultivated orchard behind the dormitory area. Hux closed his eyes as he bit into a particularly rotund specimen, juice running down his chin in sweet rivulets, and he didn’t care about Kylo’s open-mouthed stare. He’d first been a child of the blockades, of the Unknown Regions; and then, he’d been given to the untender mercies of mighty Coruscant, whose food supply was as manufactured and artificial as its weather.

Afterwards, cleaned and tidied again, Hux found himself at somewhat at a loss of what to do. Kylo had up and vanished; rare enough occurrence as it was, Hux also did not find it as welcome as he might have thought he should have. Then he had to wonder if he really _had_ insulted Kylo earlier, considering it was Dameron who showed up to take him to where the other had apparently gone.

“He was running late,” Dameron clarified, leaving Hux to sourly suppose that those who spent too much time around Force sensitives were prone to picking up telepathic abilities of their own. “Luke wanted him to come to training, and so Kylo asked me to come see if you wanted to watch.”

Something odd prickled along his skin, almost like mocking fingertips swirling an unseen pattern. “So he’s still in training?” Frowning, he added at Dameron’s raised eyebrow, “He gave me the impression back in Coruscant that he’d quit.”

“I haven’t got a clue.” Dameron even managed to sound terribly cheerful about it, too. “The Jedi thing is beyond me. I’m just a pilot, remember? And a neighbour. But it’s interesting to watch.”

Hux nodded, quite slow, an earlier question returned. “I did think you said you had family here. On Yavin 4. That you were going to go and visit them.”

“Well, yeah.” Rubbing the back of his head and shrugging at the same time, Dameron added, “Luke asked me to stick around, a bit, and there’s always time enough for that later.”

“In the midst of war.”

The flat words made him frown. “We’re not at war.”

“Aren’t we?”

Even as Hux blinked at his own vehemence, Dameron cocked his head, dark eyes narrowed. “Are…you feeling all right, Hux?”

“I’m fine.” It came out far more brusque than necessary; Hux ignored the faint hurt on the other man’s face as he folded his hands, nodded to the forest. “Take me to see this training.” A frisson jolted through him, then: the memory of Kylo, and his saber. How strong and how simple he had been, when matched to the antique weapon of another era. And then, close behind, was the memory of _Ren_ and his saber. Of how the general had so _enjoyed_ the power of him—

“Hux.” His concern came slow, as if over great distance. “You’re really flushing. Are you too hot? Because we can sit inside—”

“ _No_.” He spoke too loud, too sharp – too _commanding_. Dameron only stared. And then Hux shook his head and gave up. “Let’s just go, yes?”

The morning’s training proved not dissimilar to what he had seen at a distance, before. The students went about their prescribed movements while Skywalker moved amongst them, though he appeared less involved than Hux would have imagined. Certainly it held little in common with the drills he had been subjected to as a child, then as a young teenager; they had been corrected with rough hands and rougher words at every indication of non-conformity, of non-perfection.

Skywalker simply moved as a spirit amongst his students, and while they clearly changed their stance or form in his presence, Hux could only hear their breath and their feet, the thunk and swish of their wooden training weapons. He supposed there was some element of telepathy involved, again, or perhaps it was just Force-driven instinct. Kylo, for his own part, rarely seemed to encounter his uncle either way. He appeared always off to some degree on his own, moving through his katas. Hux knew enough to recognise when he moved from one kata to the next; he knew nothing of their detail, but all seemed focused to his power and strength, strangely controlled as both managed to be in this setting. Like the others, he held no saber: just a broad heavy training sword, one that should have always needed two hands, for all Kylo often switched to only one.

When the students broke apart, quite sudden, Skywalker turned to them as if magnetised. A moment passed, and then he waved to Hux and Dameron; they had been watching together from one of the stone-quarried auditoriums rising up from either side of the grassed ground, generally in a companionable silence. Dameron waved back, and then turned to Hux with a raised eyebrow.

“So.” Even in his amusement, Hux could sense faint trepidation. “You want to try?”

He frowned. “What?”

“It’s mostly harmless.” He seemed to have seen something he liked in Hux’s expression, because he added with something like glee, “there’s really only so much we can do, anyway, being non-sensitives.”

“Are you, though?”

The sharpness of the question quite wiped Dameron’s cheerfulness away. “What?”

“I…I don’t know.” Bewildered, suddenly, Hux fought back the tremor in his words, tried for something far more light-hearted. From Dameron’s odd expression, he was doing less well than his oratorical training should have dictated. “You’re a pilot, yes? After what Skywalker did to the first Death Star, the Imperials used to wonder if the Rebels particularly chose squadron leaders who had some sensitivity, latent and untrained though it was. To create a hive mind. All working as one, whether they were in direct contact or not.”

He was babbling. And Dameron only continued to stare. “I’m not a squadron leader.”

Frowning, now, Hux blinked back on what felt to be the beginnings of a headache. “Aren’t you?” One hand rose, his vision oddly tight around its edges. “I could have sworn…”

Even as he grimaced, leaned forward over a suddenly tight abdomen, Dameron shifted close. “Are you sure you’re really okay?” he said, one opened hand a warm weight between his shoulderblades. “Because this place…well. I know I was born here. And raised here, mostly. And it’s different, away from these temples. But it’s still…” He went silent, then, and his next words came sudden as blasterfire. “Have you ever been to Jedha?”

“Jedha?” For a long moment, the name meant little. When it clicked over in his mind, it brought with it only a sharp wave of pure vitriol. “Dameron, I spent my childhood first on Arkanis, then in the Unknown Regions. And then my father dumped us on Coruscant for reasons that only become all the more unfathomable by the day.” He smiled, wide and lovely, to show all of his teeth. “So, no. I’ve never been to Jedha.”

Rather than take offense, Dameron only rolled his eyes. “You _can_ call me Poe.” When he earned only an even stare, he sighed. “It’s just…Yavin 4 can be like Jedha. It’s a place where the Force is strong. _Too_ strong, sometimes. And here, especially…” The dark eyes glanced briefly down, like a child expecting chastisement; yet when he looked up again, they were even and almost sad. “I know something’s happening to you. What, I have no idea.”

Even with the warmth of the system’s sun on his skin, Hux felt very cold. “It’s also none of your business.”

“Yeah, no, I don’t think it’s that easy.” But already he was turning away, taking two quick steps down before he added over one shoulder, “I’m going to go join in. You can come if you want.”

Without quite making the decision, Hux followed him at some slight distance. It made no difference given Dameron never once looked back, disappearing amongst a crowd of young apprentices, only some of whom were humanoid. It seemed clear enough that even though this part of the moon was not technically his home, Dameron still spent time enough amongst them. It left something prickling with uncomfortable honesty at Hux’s won skin. Something a little like loneliness.

“Hux.” The voice dropped into his ear, smoky and half-breathless. “Did they train you with swords back in fascist school?”

Hux turned sharp, filled with the urge to hit him. But then he rolled his eyes, kept his hands firmly to himself. “Not like this, no.”

“Good.” Too close by his side, now, Kylo gave him a broad grin; Hux had to pretend it was not very much like the rare sight of the sun emerging from the near-continuous cloud cover of Arkanis. “That means you’ve got fewer bad habits to unlearn, then.”

“You’re not going to teach me.”

Kylo rolled his eyes at Hux’s unimpressed pronouncement. “Sure I am!” And Hux had no idea where Kylo then produced the two wooden swords from; he felt certain they hadn’t both been there a moment ago. And then it didn’t matter because the other was given over to him; he instead scowled at how it felt too heavy in his hand, his grip too stiff and too unknowing. Their hand-to-hand combat training within the ragtag academies formed upon star destroyers had focused more on fighting _without_ weapons, considering they always assumed that if there was a blaster to hand, that would take immediate precedence anyway. There had been some basic training in melee weaponry, but not to a degree he could possibly hope to remember now.

But it wasn’t as if he was going to suggest they wrestle, instead. Given the memories of the dreams – and the earlier treacherous arousal his mind had so willingly surrendered to – it wasn’t as if he trusted his prick anywhere in the close vicinity of Kylo’s own body.

But Kylo apparently had other ideas. Moving up close behind him, arms sliding along his own, he adjusted Hux’s two-handed grip with a skill that has Hux drawing a sharp breath. Kylo’s fingers, callused and quick, still worked to shift Hux’s to yet better form. “How does that feel?” Kylo murmured, against his ear; his breath was warm, and yet somehow welcome in even this humidity.

With his throat thick, his tongue tied, and a very sharp retort tangled in his mind, Hux knew he ought to pull away, and correct his own mistakes through trial and error. But he only shook his head, said simply, “And what is next?”

Drawing away, Kylo took his own training sword back in hand. As the distance settled between them, Hux wondered suddenly if _they_ would now fight one another; the violence of the sudden thought turned his stomach, for all it would be only play. And yet, Kylo only moved in a quick step to his right, and took up his place beside him.

“Follow me.” The grin had turned cocky, his eyes very bright. “I’ll start slow, yeah?”

“Yes, don’t strain yourself too much on my account, Kylo,” he said, perfectly dry. That got him only laughter in return, and then: he was _moving_ , though the verb alone didn’t feel to have enough breadth nor power to explain what it was that Kylo actually _did_.

When he had been young, and still amongst the old Imperials and the new Order, there had been little enough talk amongst the adults of the Force. The children had instead been left to wild rumours that passed like stormfire through their ranks, enhanced only by what little information they could parse from the archives on their own. _Magic_ , most had scoffed. _Even if it_ is _real, it’s just magic – and what magic can’t we make with our own science, anyway?_

But watching Kylo move in this way: Hux knew it was something that no conventional means could ever hope to mirror, let alone match. The Force flowed through him like a river; at time slow and meandering, at others raging and bold. Imitating such grace and power seemed at best a foolish notion, at worst purest idiocy, but Hux still shifted his feet, recentred his weight. There was something different here, compared to the way Kylo had tried to push the power through him the night before. Uncertain at first, Hux took his time, moving through the kata but only once to Kylo’s three repeats. But soon enough, his muscles found the song. The pattern kept repeating, ingraining itself into bone and muscle. And even as he gave himself over to it Kylo began striking out, moving in new and different forms. Hux kept his own counsel; it left them moving still in tandem, matched harmony to sharpest melody.

“Very good.”

Stumbling, stopping, Hux turned to find Skywalker, one bushy eyebrow arched high. “You’ve had some training, then?” he asked, and Hux squirmed beneath the question; he’d forgotten how it was, to feel so very much the child about new lessons.

“Very little.” And he blinked, shook off the strangeness of old memory. This was not Arkanis, and this was not the star destroyer that had served as his academy in its place. “But my father never did allow me to shirk basic fitness, even when we had long departed the Order.” Then, because his tongue had never quite been able to help itself, “Or so I believed, at any rate.”

“I see.” Skywalker never once looked away from Hux. “Ben. Go on back to your training with the others.”

“Why?”

That just got him a raised eyebrow. Though Hux could see the intense desire in him to protest further yet, Kylo gave a most put-upon sigh, even as his eyes moved back to Hux. “But—”

“I’ll look after our guest. Go on. Get back to it.”

Hux watched him go, loping across the ground. For the first time he realised how far they had drifted from the bulk of the group. But then, it made it only all the easier to indulge himself a moment in Kylo’s youthfulness, his startling grace for all the lanky lines of him.

When he returned his attention to Skywalker, Hux found himself with the uncomfortable sensation that those bright blue eyes saw straight through him. He cleared his throat, said nothing else. He knew this would be no easy conversation – that Skywalker had sought him out for a reason.

Then, he spoke. “The dreams are worse.”

Hux frowned, cheeks heating; he’d never imagined to find himself in the position of essentially broadcasting hardcore pornography to the uncle of a person he found himself entangled with. “Did you see it?”

“No.” Skywalker shook his head, expression unchanged. “But I sensed his distress.”

“I can’t…” Cursing his twisted tongue, Hux shook his head with sharp irriation. “I just can’t describe it to you,” he said, and settled for what he knew was a perfectly lame description. “But it was _bad_. Very bad.”

Skywalker kept quiet for almost a moment too long. “I often don’t know how to help him,” he said, and the honesty of it burned, even with the saltwater sadness that accompanied it. “I was the last of the Jedi – or so I was told. Of course there are other ways in which to develop and foster an individual’s Force sensitivity, but this is all I was taught. I have holocrons from the old archives, and those given to me by my own Master. But Ben…” His shoulders rose, fell, like the shift of endless ocean. “It’s not as if I have much to compare him to, in my own experience. But from everything I have read, he’s…remarkable. In his mind powers.”

“It’s terrifying.”

It gave Hux no comfort, to see how Skywaker only nodded. “It is.” Then, he frowned, looked back to where Kylo had apparently started a mock-fight with another initiate. If he appeared to be losing, it seemed only by choice. “He should have been more careful. From what I felt, he was…overinvolved, in your dream.” Skywalker glanced over. “I suppose you could say he’s just tuning into the frequency, like hacking a comm. He’s not there, not the way you are. But this last one…”

“I don’t think he could get out.” Hux spoke the words low, bleak enough. “Not without me.”

The freeform practice Skywalker had left his students too held a remarkable amount of order, for all its lack of instruction. Hux knew that had his own classes been left to their own devices, there would have been murder and rioting in short order. Because that had always been the only way to survive, with so little else to fight for.

“Do you speak often, with Han Solo?”

Skywalker looked startled. “Han?”

“He…was in the dream.” It took him longer than should have been necessary to form the words. “Kylo – Kylo Ren, I mean – had killed him.”

Now Skywalker’s attention shifted again to his nephew; he appeared to be using Rey as weight resistance, duelling another student while she clung like a burr to his back. “Ben didn’t mention that.”

Hux might have felt guilty, had he been inclined to such emotion. “I think Rey dreamed of it, too. Not the same dream as mine – but…she saw it. I didn’t – well, the general didn’t. But Rey…”

Folding his arms, the man took a slow breath, let it go. “I should talk to her about this.”

“She might be angry I told you.”

Hux had offered the words neither as warning nor apology, though Skywalker appeared to take them as both. “Rey’s very attached to Han. I think she’ll want to talk about it.”

Again, as the conversation appeared to wind itself to a pause, Hux watched the students, again. Against the backdrop of the distant temple, they appeared very small indeed. “Kylo doesn’t get along with his father.”

The statement only made him snort. “Well, that’s a pitfall you don’t want to go leaning too close to the edge of,” Skywalker said. “But if you’re asking if Ben would hurt his father—”

“He wouldn’t. I know that.” At Skywalker’s arch look of surprise, he almost laughed. “I met him, you know. Very briefly. Han Solo, I mean.” All humour had vanished when he added, flat, “He didn’t like me.”

The pale eyes narrowed, though Hux doubted the gleam in them had anything to do with himself. “I wouldn’t think it’s personal,” he said, eventually. “Han…well. Han has never been very comfortable with the Force. When I first met him, he told me more than once that I’d be better off believing in things that were real, not some mystical garbage being fed to me by an old guy who lived in the sand dunes of Tatooine.” He was actually smiling when he added, near-melancholy, “There are days, too, when I think that he may have been right.”

“He’s scared of his son,” Hux said, without emotion. “And of Rey.”

Something like frustration flickered over the weathered lines of his face; apparently, life on first a desert planet, followed then by years of war and teaching, could age a man far more than necessary. “I don’t think it’s fair to say he’s _scared_. More…he doesn’t understand what they are. Or what they can do.” And though he spoke of another man, Hux felt as though Skywalker’s every word could have been directed at himself. “Han’s spent his life trusting on what he can see, hear, touch…things that are real, and obvious. And even as he watched me fall to the Force, he still had Leia. Who is the most sensible of us all.” Then his smile turned crooked. “He just didn’t know what to make of it, when she gave him Ben.”

That left him startled. “Can’t he feel it?” he asked, too sharp. “She’s just as strong in the Force as the rest of you.”

“You can feel that?”

The squirming in his stomach was better off ignored. “You’re saying he _can’t_?”

“It’s not quite how I’d phrase it, perhaps. But…” Shaking his head, Skywalker looked back to his students; a shadow had settled over his features, and his spirit with it. “Something has to give.”

This time, he had a crawling sensation over his body entire. “Like what?”

“I’m not sure.” He sighed, too quick. “But I hope it’s not Ben.”

Swallowing hard on a question he didn’t know how to ask, Hux again looked down. Kylo had apparently surrendered, swarmed now by the youngest of the students, apparently led by Dameron. Rey rode his shoulders, brandishing what was likely Kylo’s practice sword, voice raised high in casual victory.

“What about Rey?” he asked, very quiet.

“Rey?” Skywalker almost seemed surprised. “Rey…Rey will likely surpass him.”

“That’s not what I meant. But…” Even as he watched Dameron put Rey down, who promptly went to drag her cousin to his oversized feet, Hux pursed his lips. “Kylo’s not exactly built for dreams like mine, I guess. But I worry even more about Rey being exposed to them.”

“So do I.”

“So what are you going to do about it?”

At first, he appeared taken aback at his vehemence. It turned wry soon enough. “You have to realise, I came to my own power very late,” he said. “Had the Jedi still existed, they wouldn’t have trained me at all. I was far too old.” One finger rose, tapped light to his lips. “But what I don’t know…would I have been this powerful, had I been trained this young? Or are they just gaining in power, with every generation?” Now his eyes darkened. “What does it want so badly from us, that it would do this to the Skywalker family?”

“What does _what_ want?”

“The Force.” And for the first time since they had met, Hux heard true negative emotion in Skywalker’s words. “Anakin Skywalker appears to have been born to Shmi Skywalker a virgin birth. _That’s_ what it has done to us.”

“Does anyone actually believe that? Surely his genetic tests said something. He can’t have just _spored_ from her.”

That made him snort, and Hux didn’t know why. But then, Skywalker had himself been raised on Tatooine. Likely he knew better the sad state of its medical facilities. “Many of the records are lost. But they could only tell she was the mother. The father’s DNA was nothing anyone had ever seen before, at least in its particular combination.”

Hux closed his eyes. Such dreams hadn’t been allowed even when sleeping, for one born to his own world. “The Force made him, and then forced him through a mother to make him human.”

“So it would seem.”

“But all the children since have been born _only_ of other humans,” Hux replied, stretching the muscles of debate and finding them ready for a riot. “Surely that dilutes it.”

Skywalker raised an eyebrow. “Now you see my dilemma.”

“What, that they’re impossibly all stronger than you will ever be, and you don’t know what to do about it?”

Skywalker’s faint irritation smoothed itself away a moment after it appeared. Something about it suggested it had been a learned gesture, and one who mastery had taken some degree of time. “The Force cannot _make_ decisions for us. There are always choices.” And here he paused, as if he did have to think very hard about the next words. “But it exerts enough influence that sometimes we cannot be sure which choices belong to the Force, and which remain entirely our own.”

The wave of anger that moved through Hux then was sudden, nauseating, almost bending him in two. He sat down, heavy, and Skywalker only sighed. Only when Hux’s breathing had returned to normal did he speak, again, though he made no movement closer to him.

“I should go back to my students,” he said, and he sounded almost sorry – but not for what he had said. “But we’ll talk again.”

Hux bit back on the words that he wished to say. Instead, he kept about him the veneer of false civility. “Of course,” he said, faintly dull. Because it was not Skywalker’s fault he had been brought here, for all the man had been part of it. From the weight of those blue eyes upon him, Brendol Hux Jr. was the last person he would have wanted involved in this. “Thank you,” Hux said, instead, and it burned. “For having me here, I mean.”

“Of course,” he echoed. It seemed he wanted to say something else, something more. Instead he kept to himself. Hux supposed he should be glad, even as Skywalker turned and moved away.

Hux paused a moment, himself. He could go back into the temple complex proper; for all its sprawling nature, the great pyramid provided an easy enough landmark to gather his bearings by. But instead he took his place halfway up the amphitheatre seating, again, though he did not look down to the students below. Their training now seemed to have devolved into some sort of ball game, one where Dameron appeared to be the unlikely ringleader. He looked away instead, to the expanse of forest, the great blue sky above, and the heavy presence of Yavin itself in the sky above, ghostly white against the blue.

“You look lonely.”

His shoulders tightened, and much as he yearned to look to here, he kept to the skies instead. “Yes, well.” He didn’t mean to sound bitter, not to her. It happened anyway. “It’s not really my place, I suppose.”

“It could be.”

“I don’t have any Force sensitivity.”

She tugged on his arm – and when he looked to her, he found something odd in her gaze. Not pity, exactly. But: a sadness, like a normal person trying to describe the colour of stars and sky to one who saw the worlds only in monochrome. “I could teach you something,” Rey said, very soft, and he shivered.

But in the end it probably _would_ better to have a child do it, considering his own level. The shiver came again as he remember Kylo’s hands on his, when he had tried to demonstrate how to raise the water glass. And then, how easy they had moved together with their training swords in hand. It had been but a welcome invitation to thought of how well they might move together in other ways. In deeper ways.

Hux swallowed hard, looked away. “It’s probably not a good idea.”

“Oh, it’s not warrior techniques. Not like we were doing.” And she brightened, suddenly, as if her heart was a star and she the supernova. “Did you see me?”

In fact he hadn’t. He was still searching for the politest way to say so when she rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t matter. We’ve still got time.” And she tugged his hands to hers, joined their fingers in the brief space between them. “But I’ll teach you something else. With your _brain_.”

“I’m not sure mind tricks are a good idea.”

“Mmm, but it’s not really a mind trick.” She tilted her head, hazel eyes dangerously bright. “It’s more like…looking for something. But in a place you’d never usually think to look.”

“That’s usually the last place.”

“With the Force, it’s actually kind of the first.” Her hands were very warm. “I can show you!”

Instinctive reluctance, again, warned him of the mistakes just waiting to be made. “I really don’t think it’s a good idea.” It was with some unwillingness – Hux had never spoken well of his own failures – that he added, “Kylo tried to show me—”

She snorted, waving away his concern like smoke. “Benny’s not a good teacher.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And you are?”

“Benny’s not _patient_.” She leaned too close, her whisper that of a co-conspirator. “And it’s good for some things. Like, I saw him showing you the katas. He’s good at _that_.” Settling back on her heels, she glanced down again to the ball game; for a moment, he wondered why she wasn’t playing. But sometimes, he thought, it was almost too easy to forget how small she actually was.

“But maybe he’s…I don’t know. Too strong, I think. With his mind.”

With a half-masked shudder, Hux thought perhaps Rey was really the only one who understood why Hux shared too many dreams with Ben Organa Solo, when in all rights he should never have been having them at all.

“So what is it you want to show me, then?” he asked, voice a little too hoarse, a little too rough. “If it’s not a mind trick?”

“It’s more like…sharing.” Then, hurried: “Not like your dreams. That’s different.”

“Rey—”

“We sense each other,” she said, so quick the words tumbled over one another; they shouldn’t have made the slightest bit of sense to him, and yet somehow they _did_. “Through the Force, I mean. Because we’re all connected. And it’s easier for us, because it’s…well. It’s like we’re born to it.” And she smiled, now almost shy. “But you can learn it, too.”

“This is like when Kylo taught you to shield?”

Her grin turned devilish at that. “Kind of. But it’s not like you’re looking with your brain.” Her small hand shot out then, poked him with surprising strength. “You’re searching with your heart.”

Even when she drew back, he fancied he could still feel her there. “I don’t get it.”

“Mmm,” she said, with perfect disbelief. “Close your eyes.”

Without complaint – at least, not spoken aloud – Hux did so. He had no real idea what she had meant. All was silence, save for the voices below, and the forest beyond. He’d just had time enough to think his left foot was beginning to fall asleep when a small voice rocked through his mind with the force of a hurricane.

_Hux?_

His eyes popped open in surprise. Rey, shaking her finger, then kicked out with one foot to catch him in the ankle. “Close your eyes!”

Though he did so, he didn’t want to. Neither did he want to hear that voice, again.

_Hux?_

He wished for nothing more than to pull back, to pull away. And yet there he remained, tense and trembling. But it was like being somehow mute. He had no idea how to answer her, even as the words tripped over themselves, desperate to break free of the cage that was his own mind.

_Hux, can you hear me?_

He bit back on the desire to scream it aloud. _I don’t want this!_ Instead he opened his eyes, found only her disappointment. Something like a headache had again begun to build behind his eyes.

“I told you it wouldn’t work,” he said, very dull. And she sighed.

“That’s not what you said.” The faintest of smiles had begun to pull at her lips. “But, you know.” Reaching out, she patted his leg like a lady soothing her skittish pet. “At least you know where to look for me, now.”

“Rey—”

“I’m going to go play with the others.” Three steps ahead, she glanced back, but only for a moment. “You should come!”

He didn’t. Hux watched, instead. And then he looked again to the empty skies above, and wondered just what he was waiting for.

 

*****

 

 _The general stands alone in his ‘fresher. In the frameless reflection of the mirror, Hux is startled to see what has become of the long, lean body: a blue-black web of bruising and abrasions cast hard over once-white skin. Some of it had been taken in the fall of Starkiller, perhaps – but then, he remembers with growing nausea the encounter with Kylo Ren in the medbay. Though this body is not his own he can feel the ache of hips, of thighs whose muscles feel stretched nearly to tearing; his backside, raw both inside and out, is no better. And Hux wishes for nothing more than to close his eyes, to chase away these images, to be nothing but_ himself _, again._

_The general will not allow it. Methodical and quick, he performs his ablutions with no delicacy, no coddling of his injuries, even as he wastes the water in doing so; in such emergency circumstances, only the sonic should be used. But it appears even this most orderly of generals does not care. He instead stands with head back, eyes open, water running down his face, hair dark-red and bleeding. And he doesn’t care a bit._

_But when he looks down, Hux notes dispassionately that there is actual blood in the water. The general himself stares for a long moment, his thoughts vacant, oddly silent. And then: his hand is around his cock, and Hux gasps at the impotence of his presence, at the echo of his own self and his own weakness, taken but hours before. But the general has not long ago brought himself to climax on the body of a broken man. And yet his arousal comes too quick, and too easy by half._

_Hux tries to pull back, to escape as he has once before. It is not enough; the distress of this is not disgust enough to pull him free, or so it seems. There’s great bitterness in this fact, in that the Force will grant him ability enough to peer through realities, but not will not give enough influence to curate his own experience. The unfairness of it digs deep, burns bright: that he should have so little control, when by all rights he should have no exposure to matters such as this at all._

_It is at least mercifully quick; the general brings himself to a grim orgasm, though again his thoughts are oddly non-specific, barely acknowledged – it is as if the man runs on some primal instinct alone. Raising his hand, the general stares silent at the webbing of white between still fingers. Then he is washing it away, along with everything else. Wherever the blood of earlier was from, it has stopped now._

_When the water runs out the general steps dripping from the cubicle to stand before his vanity, and the utilitarian mirror above it. There is the difference of their age, of course, and the scars they do not share, from the years of their lives that were so fundamentally different. But Hux recognises him all the same. In many ways, they_ are _the same person. The blue-green eyes stare into the mirror, as if the general knows he is there. Hux can only stare back, and wonder what it is the other man truly sees._

_The man’s thoughts remain strangely obtuse, non-contemplative and uncritical as he dries himself, and then begins to dress as if expecting parade inspection the moment he leaves his quarters. Hux does not even know who might have that power over one such as the general, for all his relative youth. He’s not even sure it matters, outside of this empty mind._

_The uniform proves a strange thing, in pieces; when it comes together it serves to bulk the man outwards, giving his body the gravitas and physical presence his mind alone cannot provide. His red hair, he carefully slicks back; it emphasises the shadowed hollows of his face, with skin too pale and eyes overlarge._

_But his hands hold still in the tight confines of his leather gloves. Now, attired for rank and for right, the general stands at attention. It’s starkly disorientating – and all the stranger for it, given Hux certainly has never worn a general’s stripes, had never had a uniform in the Order quite like that of an executive officer. But his own memories come as sudden tangled tsunami. And for a moment he is lost beneath their weight, choked by the past, by a life stolen from him, one that might never be returned._

_The general strides down a corridor, aboard his great star destroyer; Hux comes back to him in bits and pieces, like a poorly tuned commlink missing the frequency at every faltering shift. The man wears again his greatcoat, though with his arms through the sleeves for once. It flaps about his booted calves, his thoughts a riot of figures and failings. He is composing and recomposing a report at breakneck speed, and it is too convoluted and complex for Hux to keep track of even its barest intention; the general’s shorthand is dizzying and intensely personal, and far beyond even this distant different shadow of his own self._

_A door lies before him unmarked and sealed; Hux can tell, impossible as that should be, that it is rarely used. The general keys an override, steps inside as though he owns it outright. It opens to a small dim chamber, claustrophobic and tight on all sides, for all it appears a generous enough space on a ship that so jealously guards and utilises every spare inch. The door has locked at the general’s back, and Hux tells himself he imagines the flinch the man makes at the sound. He is calm, after all, looking only ahead, hands folded at parade rest at the small of his back and chin held high._

_A flickering emerges from the dark, strange silver flame – and then: ah. Apparently this is a dedicated holochamber. As a vision blooms to terrible life before him, Hux recoils in the man’s mind even as the general holds steady. But he himself suppresses a similar reaction, one that he has tried to train from himself completely. A rare failure._

_But then, there has been much failure, as of late._

_And yet Hux knows intellectually that his reflexive disgust is understandable, given the creature before him. It is a ruin of a thing, long and pale, dressed entirely in black. The curved crumbling body is topped with a head bald and deeply scarred, eyes too big and too clever by half; even as they watch, long fingers curl to a palm as if about some stray throat._

_“General,” it says, drawling and rasping. “Why have you not yet brought me my apprentice?”_

_“Supreme Leader,” he says, his voice perfectly modulated, as even as the vocoder Kylo Ren must himself use for the same effect, “our schedules have not aligned as we would have hoped.” Here he pauses, recalculates, moves forward again. “But the_ Finalizer _is on course, and we will be to you within the cycle.”_

This _is the Supreme Leader, Hux thinks, bleak and cold. He has never seen him in the general’s thoughts. It makes him almost glad; this is a terrible creature, strange and uncomfortable. The menace from him is little more than promise of an ending. And he knows they both fear it, for all that the general’s anger – once taken out upon the broken body of Kylo Ren – is now shuttered away and silent._

 _And the creature’s lipless mouth twists about something only someone desperate might have named a smile. “Very well,” it says, rumbling and low as lahar. “Do not disappoint me.” And then, the faintest, and most final of pauses. “_ General _.”_

_When it disappears, it leaves the man alone in the darkness of his own flagship – save, perhaps, for the presence of Hux, behind his eyes. But he wants to be gone from this place, too. It should have been his, once. Some part of him yearns for it yet. But for now, Hux only wants to go._

_But there’s an odd sensation in the man’s too quiet mind, echoed and alien: the general himself, for the first time in his life, wants to walk away from everything he has created. Everything he is._

_Hux thinks bitterly,_ if only it were that pfassking simple.

 

*****

 

Awake, again, Hux stared at the ceiling. The urge to go to Kylo had dug itself deep into his bones, but he resisted any movement at their orders. The whole idea seemed nothing if not utterly ludicrous. And yet, it was a battle doomed to his own loss; Hux soon found himself rising, stepping out onto the wooden veranda where they had curled together in the pile of blankets only the night before. Even in the soft heat of the night that coldness, again, shifted ice fingers down the ladder of his spine. Shivering, Hux retreated back inside.

He didn’t know where Kylo slept, exactly. But he did know where the dormitories were, and Skywalker had made it clear enough that Kylo was supposed to be over there somewhere. After having coaxed the lantern again to dim warm light, Hux sorted through the stash of borrowed clothing, found something vaguely respectable to change into. Even for something as dubious as wandering the temple complex in the dark silence of early morning, he was not going to go out in his sleepwear.

Though it was likely the normal manner of things, Hux found it odd that he didn’t run into anyone. It left him with a strange loneliness instead, that odd chill of earlier still clinging to even his sweat-clammy skin. Pausing a moment in one of the arcades, Hux looking to the distant ziggurat. Yavin hung still in the sky at its zenith, the light of the planet giving a faint crimson cast to the moon’s surface and sky. He frowned. Here, they were far from the Massassai complexes that had been repurposed by the Rebellion – and this seemed something older, deeper, somehow stranger than even that place of such recent remarkable history.

Turning now in the direction of the dormitories, Hux quickened his step. Yet as he drew closer, turning a corridor, his stomach took an ugly twist. Lights flooded from between uneven gaps in stone, voices raised to create the sounds of an excited quickfire rabble.

And now, turning back seemed the only real option. To go back to his borrowed room, and pretend he had never seen a moment of it. To climb into his lonely, cold bed, and lie sleepless in the remnants of the dreams he’d found there.

But Hux moved forward. The voices resolved themselves into a gaggle of students, arms folded like self-embrace over their chests, hands clutching at their upper arms; their eyes were wide to match, for all they remained heavy with disturbed sleep. And the chattering din seemed to grow only louder the closer he came. Only when one caught his approach, from the corner of their eye, did silence abruptly fall across them all. Hux did not pause in his own quick step closer, even as he did not see Kylo nor Rey amongst them. He could feel only dull surprise, at that.

“What happened?”

A dozen pairs of eyes watched him, and not one attached mouth moved in anything like an answer. Casting his own eye over the group again, in a more critical analysis of their number, Hux wondered where Dameron was. He was considering going to seek him out when she appeared: Rey, weaving between them, face wan and eyes wide.

“Hux.” Small fingers grasped him about the hand, allowed no protest as they began to pull. “You need to see him.”

Making no objection, he began to move to her trajectory. “Rey, what happened?”

“ _Dreams_ ,” she said, as if that explained everything. Rather dimly, he supposed it just might. “Come _on_!”

Towards the end of a long stone corridor, Rey ducked into a small shared room; from the mess of the other bed, it seemed Kylo had at least one roommate. Kylo himself remained in his own narrow cot, tangled in his sheets; his skin had sheened to a dull glow with sweat and salt, throat convulsing with low choking moan. Skywalker had pulled up a chair at his side, one hand pressed the flushed skin of his nephew’s forehead, his soft voice in constant low murmur.

“Master Luke.” Hux could detect only the faintest tremor to her careful words. “He came.”

When the man turned his head, Hux nearly recoiled – might have retreated, if not for Rey, still at his side. Something cold and distant shimmered behind the blue of his eyes, turned them murky green by the golden light of the hanging lantern.

And then, with a sigh, Skywalker shook his head, and appeared now only tired. “Your dream,” he offered, weary and worn; Hux drew up to his full height, spine in a line both taut and strange. His words emerged as flat, emotionless waste.

“You’re saying that I did this.”

This time when Skywalker met Hux’s gaze, he sensed only pity. “I didn’t say that.”

At his side, the great long body suddenly went very still. Hux’s eyes flicked over – and then Kylo’s eyes opened. Staring and dark, they held all the terrible power granted to the gravitational drag of a singularity.

“Hux.” It rasped from him, ground like broken glass to Hux’s own ear. “It was him. It was _Snoke_.”

He knew he should move across the room. But he did not – he _could_ not. Hux remained instead bracketed by the door frame, unnaturally still. Rey’s hand did not move, still small and tight around his own. “I’m sorry,” he said, dull, too low. And Kylo closed his eyes tight, shook his head in violent back and forth.

“ _Hux_.” Laughter erupted from his trembling chest, sudden and wild and so loud Hux winced. “The _voice_. It was _Snoke_.”

Even in such tropical climate, Hux felt as all heat had been stolen from the world around them both. “ _What_?”

His entire body spasmed, sharp and sudden. Skywalker was already gentling him down again, murmuring so quick and so low Hux took it more for mantra than frank comfort; still Kylo’s back arched as he rose, mouth opened on a silent shriek. Now Skywalker rose, small hands opened wide over his chest, forcing him gently down. Only when Kylo had returned to some semblance of calm, silent in his stillness for all his face remained twisted in something between agony and ecstasy, did Hux find himself able to ask.

“What’s happening?”

Skywalker never once looked away from his nephew. “I’m not sure,” he said, but the hardness of the words spoke of one who had no intention of leaving such mystery to solve itself. “Rey?”

She snapped to attention at Hux’s side, her manner reminding him oddly of cadets and small children already conversant in the ways of war. “Yes?”

“Run to the kitchens.” One hand moved to his waist, rested light upon a small pouch there. “You know what I need.”

He almost expected her to salute. He could only be glad that she did not, instead letting go his hand to turn, and to run at full pelt, bare feet slapping the stones of the corridor. With her hand gone from his own, it left Hux feeling anchorless, adrift in strange and troubled waters. As if with the currents he moved forward until he was at Kylo’s beside, Skywalker but a handsbreadth away. But Hux made no motion to reach to him. Instead, he only stared down at him, and held his silence. In return, Kylo’s hand flashed out with sudden and unerring purpose, closing tight around Hux’s own with bruising strength. He made no other movement. And Hux himself did not draw away.

Rey had returned, something he somehow did not notice until he realised the low susurration to his right was in fact Skywalker and Rey fussing over a small, steaming mug. The man had taken a small twist of paper from his pocket, presumably fabricated from some of the great leaves of the jungle beyond; within lay a sharply yellow powder, its colour too bright in the dim gloom. Hux only watched as Skywalker emptied perhaps half of its contents into the water, with the rest screwed up and returned to a pocket of his overrobe. Only then did he realise for the first time he was dressed as he would be during the day, and he had not done so in a hurried fashion.

One hand moved to cradle the back of Kylo’s head, even as his eyes remained closed. Only when Skywalker had guided him to half-seated position did he encourage the shallow cup to his lips. Even though Kylo appeared mostly asleep, for all the troubled expression he still wore, he drank easily enough; a little dribbled free, though most managed to make it into his mouth. His brow furrowed deeper, perhaps at the taste; a faint moan trembled upon the twisted line of his mouth. But Skywalker was letting him lie down, again, gentle so he would not fall.

When he was lying down, again, Skywalker set about rearranging his blankets, tucking his nephew into his bed as if he were little more than a child of three or four. Hux made no motion to assist, only watched as time dragged onward. But Skywalker’s draught, whatever it might have contained, soon enough came into its own; Kylo’s breathing eased, the lines upon his face smoothing out as he relaxed into something like proper sleep, artificial as it was. When Kylo’s grasp relaxed to nothing, Hux stepped backward, and let his hand fall free and alone.

Skywalker passed his own hand over his brow, lips quirked to small smile, weary though it was. “He’ll be all right,” he murmured, more to himself than any other. “For a while.” And before Hux could think to argue the point, he glanced up, caught her eye. “Rey?”

“Yes?”

The words managed to be deep, simple, mighty quest given over to young hero. “Will you watch over him, for a while?”

Already she moved to take his place; she seemed very small in the chair the Jedi master had vacated for her to fill. “Yes.”

Again, he smiled, and the lingering sadness about it made Hux wonder if Skywalker had smiled in genuine pleasure in a very long time. “I won’t be long,” he told her, once last touch of his hand to the back of Kylo’s own. Then he was turning, bearded features very still. “Hux?”

He needed no instruction. He also kept silent as he moved just behind the Jedi, finding his own path through the tangle of youth. Skywalker had stopped before them, allowing them to cluster close before he gave them brief words that Hux himself did not listen to. Whatever it was he told them, it led to only reluctant dispersal.

Hux found he didn’t care, following Skywalker instead with a lack of curiosity utterly alien to his usual attitude. And Skywalker did not lead them to his meditation chamber, as he had on the day of Hux’s first arrival. Instead they went only outside. The faintest hints of dawn had gathered at the horizon: not enough to change the quality of the night sky, but just enough to remind them that it was coming.

“I don’t blame you for this.”

Hux looked to the half-orb of Yavin, shook his head with bitter certainty. “Perhaps you should.”

“I want to.” The honesty of it had Hux’s head turning, though he found no accusation upon the man’s weary features. “But it’s not your fault, Hux.”

“ _Snoke_.” The word tasted violent upon his tongue, like bloodsalt and burning ash. “Who is he?”

“I don’t know.” It was not helpless. It was hard instead, an old wound that scarred deep and hard. “We never knew,” he said, and now there lurked the faintest hint of resigned surprise about the words, too. “Ben told you about it, then?”

“Some of it.” He gave the answer warily enough, for all he doubted secrets would serve any of them well, in these strange days. “He said there was a voice in his head, when he was young.” The next words held a faint reluctance, and yet he gave over to them all the same. “And then his Aunt…exorcised him?”

“Mara.” His face flashed with some odd expression, chased away but a second later; to Hux, it had been the strongest resemblance he’d ever noticed between Skywalker and Organa. “She showed him how to shield against outside influences, and it appeared to drive him away. As far as we can tell, Snoke never tried to come back – Ben never said anything, and we never sensed any return of his influence. But even Mara couldn’t tell the source, for all she’d been more involved with the Dark than any of us.” He seemed somewhere between amused and resigned when he added, “She was a Hand to the old Emperor.”

Hux closed his eyes, very briefly; somewhere, in the back of his mind, he could hear the tight flap of crimson banners in a strong wind, could feel the tug of a white cape about shoulders held strong and a spine rigid and upright. “Interesting choice of occupation,” he murmured, eyes open, again. “For someone who ended up involved with the last of the Jedi, I mean.”

That earned him a sour look – one that made Skywalker appear oddly youthful, for all he was no old man yet. “I could say the same for the general who ended up in the bed of a Knight of Ren.”

“Let’s not talk about that.”

The man nodded, arms folding across his chest. “Yes, it’s hardly dinnertime conversation.” And for a moment, said conversation rested – and not uneasily. Hux waited while Skywalker collected his thoughts; a sigh, and he was done. “Mara has been trying, all these years, to determine what Snoke was.”

“And she’s found nothing?”

Skywalker, again, appeared unimpressed by Hux’s sharp question. “She has been away for many reasons, most of which I will not tell you about.” His own sharpness evaporated as his brow furrowed, something distant entering his eyes. A light, ever-bright and always held at arm’s length. “But…she does research. Seeks out Jedi and Sith holocrons from ancient sites, and has them sent back to me to study.”

Hux knew then desire to ask why she did not bring them back herself – if Skywalker had even seen her again, after she had presumably left their daughter to his singular care. But he also knew better enough than to ask. Which was likely why he did.

“Do you teach that here?” At Skywalker’s frown, he added, “the non-attachment clause of the Jedi code. If that was what it was. They never married, did they?”

His lips worked, deep in the beard that had already begun to grey around its edges. Then he shook his head. “I encourage the students to focus upon themselves, first. But I don’t discourage friendship, or deeper connections.” He met Hux’s eyes, did not blink. “No matter how peculiar those connections may be.”

He had to look away, cheeks caught in sudden high flush. And even as he began counting stars to quieten his heartbeat, Skywalker went on.

“When it comes to Ben, Mara’s been very interested in what we call the Living Force.”

That had him frowning, looking back; he’d never liked the feeling of ignorance. “What is that? The Force in living things? I thought Kylo told me it was already in all living things.”

“It is.” Again, his face folded in upon a frown. “The Living Force…it’s a different way of accessing it. Or observing it, I suppose – of becoming _one_ with it. It’s not the Jedi way, precisely, though there were Jedi who sought it out.” Something quirked at the corner of his lips; not quite a smile. A borrowed emotion, perhaps, felt very strongly from another. “One Jedi, in particular, was the Master of the Jedi who first taught me.”

Hux sought out the name, found it in faint memory. “Obi-Wan Kenobi?”

“The very same.” His voice took on a queer tone when he added, “The Jedi that Ben was named for.” Before Hux could think to comment or even clarify, Skywalker went on. “He was also the Master to Anakin Skywalker – though had the Force had its way, there was another who would have trained him. His own Master, as it was.”

“Who was that?”

Again, Hux felt from Skywalker a sorrow that did not appear to be his own. “His name was Qui-Gon Jinn.” Then, he gave a short, humourless chuckle. “And given the circumstances, I believe Master Jinn is perhaps the most qualified to give us advice on Ben Solo. Or to train Ben himself, if that’s even possible.”

“But he’s dead. Surely.”

“Yes. That was why Anakin’s training fell to Master Kenobi.” Something odd shifted behind his pale eyes, disappearing as quickly as Hux had noticed it. “There are ways for those passed, those strong in the Force, to communicate with the living. It doesn’t always last; I haven’t personally seen Ben Kenobi in years.” At Hux’s raised eyebrow, he only shook his head. “And to the best of my knowledge, no-one now living has communicated with Master Jinn at all.”

For a long moment Hux resumed counting the stars above, as if their simple order could make sense of such chaos below. In the end, he felt he’d achieved little when he gave up, and turned back to Skywalker and his watchful gaze. “But you feel if you understood this…Living Force, that you might be able to? That you could ask this dead Master for advice, for Kylo?”

Skywalker gave a small, rolling shrug; Hux sensed no uncertainty, no embarrassment. “Master Jinn saw the Force differently to other Jedi. We know, for instance, that he took a deep interest in the Temple of the Whills, before the Empire destroyed the holy city. And their guardians, though not Jedi, held great connection to the Force.” Again, Hux could see something of the headstrong youth who starred in so many stories of the great Rebellion when he added, “I can but hope that might be given opportunity enough to speak with him.”

Hux, the child of doomed Imperials, shared no such convictions. “You said Master Jinn should have trained Anakin Skywalker,” he began, slow and careful. “Do you think Ben Solo is doomed to follow that path? The Dark Side?” In his mind burned the memory of a red saber, held in the hand of Kylo Ren – and also, too, the memory of the same saber in the hand of Kylo Organa Solo.

And now Skywalker frowned, shook his head. “I don’t know. But I _do_ know there is only so much I can do for him myself. And your dreams suggest we’ve done _something_ right, to have kept Ben to a lighter path, for this long.” Raising his hand – the non-cybernetic one, Hux noted, the same one he’d laid upon Kylo’s flushed skin – Skywalker pressed his hair away from his face. “But it is my responsibility, as both his uncle and the only Master he has known, to locate someone who _can_ aid him where I cannot.”

A light wind had begun to rise; without thinking Hux turned into it, let it play over his skin, “And you think this is why this Snoke was so interested in him?” he asked, blunt. “Why it seems he’s been interested in him, across multiple realities?”

“Ben is unusual.” And then he snorted, corrected his own assessment. “Ben is _unique_.”

“As are all Skywalkers, it seems to me.”

For reasons Hux expected would always be unknown, Skywalker actually appeared taken back by the remark. And then he coughed, looked upwards to the same stars and planet that Hux had pretended to be so fascinated for. At this angle, one could almost make out the uneven orb of Yavin 3. “Well,” he said, and it was a long moment before he spoke again. “Well, Ben won’t wake for hours, yet. You should go get some sleep.”

His hands moved to quiet fists at the thought, unknown, unseen even to Hux himself. Though he doubted the dreams would come again in what was left of tonight – and that Kylo, in his sedated state, would be exposed further to them – the thought twisted his stomach, left him faintly nauseated and cold.

And Skywalker sighed, again. “If you want to stay with him,” he said, very soft, “you can.”

Hux only looked away, to the path that would lead back to his empty room. “It’s probably better if I don’t.”

Sitting on the veranda, a blanket about his shoulders, Hux didn’t find any sleep of his own. In the end he shrugged off even that slight weight; it had the bitter taste of false memory about it, somehow. At the breakfast table, he then found himself enduring the low murmurs and stares of the students. As the child of an Imperial defector, it took no skin off of his nose. Instead he kept an eye out for Skywalker. The man arrived late to the meal, and from his clothing had not bothered looking for any rest of his own. There was no sign of Rey.

As Skywalker began to fill a plate from what little his students had left behind – baby Jedi had ravenous appetites, it seemed – Hux rose from his own place at the table. Something said it was a mistake, but he kept moving all the same.

“How is he?”

Skywalker didn’t look up from his contemplation of the nearly emptied porridge bowl. “Sleeping, still.”

He got nothing else from the man. With no desire to eat of his own, despite the fact he’d had only a piece of sweet pulpy fruit earlier, Hux set about getting himself a fresh cup of the temple’s closest equivalent of caf, a strong black tea. Seated at his place, watching the silent Master, he drank slow of its bitterness. And then he watched as the reticent and subdued students finished and tidied away the remnants of their own meal, and then dispersed. But Skywalker had not moved, not yet.

Again he moved close. “Can I see him?”

“Do you want to?”

Hux gave no verbal answer. But whatever Skywalker saw in his eyes was apparently enough for him. All too soon they were moving again, back through the temple. Only sudden footsteps at their back interrupted their silence.

“Wait!”

They turned, almost as one. Dameron, dark hair a riotous mess and high colour upon dusky cheeks, flushed deeper under their joint gaze. “There’s…there’s been a comm from Senator Organa.”

Skywalker gave him singularly unimpressed look. “I thought I made it clear we weren’t to disturb her with Ben’s condition unless it became unavoidable.”

He shook his head, still catching his breath; Hux began to suspect again that Dameron did not sleep within the temple compound, and in fact had just come from wherever his family had originally lived. “I don’t think she knows about Ben. She didn’t mention him at all.” The dark eyes now fixed upon someone else entirely. “She said she’s bringing someone here to see _Hux_.”

His sudden, rapid heartbeat felt to have climbed right up into his throat, and with ever pulse, he knew what it could mean: electrocuffs about wrist and ankle, his identichip blacklisted, refugee status revoked, settled into a transport not back to Coruscant, but to one of its many orbiting penal colonies.

“I can’t stay here.” It wasn’t panic, not yet, but his voice quickened and rose with every word. “Skywalker, let me leave. Just give me a ship. You won’t see me again—”

“Whoa, whoa, Red – stop.” His hand felt too hot on his forearm; Hux shook it off, and Dameron just shook his head harder. “It’s not the long arm of the Republican law, at least not so far as I know.” He reached for him again, even as Hux stepped neatly back. “She said it was Nahani Gillen. Apparently she’s the senator for Uyter. Do you know her?”

His knees went out from under him. The move was horrifyingly pathetic, leaving him scrambling for the support of the pilot, shorter but at least stockier. But he did not fall. Leaning upon Dameron, Hux held his place, staring up at the sky as if they would appear at any second, already half-blinded by the sun. He had the vague awareness that Skywalker had taken his leave, though Dameron remained. And he closed his eyes, tried to find something like sensible thought once more.

“Are they here now?” he asked, hoarse and aching. And Dameron, almost bewildered now, shook his head.

“They’re en route. It’ll be half a day, maybe.” Then, with genuine concern: “Hux, buddy. You need to sit down.”

Without further thought, Hux dropped, head cradled in his hands long before he hit the ground. Oddly, Dameron came down beside him, one broad hand flat on a shoulderblade. The odd warmth of it almost did something for the strange chill in his blood.

“So, uh.” He cleared his throat. “You need a hand getting back?”

Hux glanced up, bleak. “Back _where_?”

“Your room?” Dameron’s smile turned lopsided; it suited his easy handsomeness almost a little too well. “You might want to have a liedown. A cup of tea, even – there’s a great blend I can get you, good for the nerves. Local recipe, native plants.” Then he chuckled, again, the sound as rich and warm as the air of his homeworld. “And yeah, you probably want to doll yourself up a bit for a couple of lady senators. Especially one that used to be a princess.”

Hux managed a smile of his own, weary and watery both, as he pushed back to his feet. One hand moved out, caught Dameron at the elbow. “Especially one that used to be my _boss_ ,” he said, wan, and Dameron blinked very hard.

“Oh. Yeah. Benny did mention…” When he first started swearing, in was in what Hux could only assume a particularly colourful native dialect; only the very last of it appeared to be in Basic. “ _Shit_. Did we kidnap you from your actual _job_ or something? Benny didn’t tell me _that_ —”

With a shake of his head, Hux almost chuckled. “Technically, I quit. Before Kylo kidnapped me. But it wasn’t as if I’d had much in the way of prospects before that.” And then, unable to mask the pride in it: “I did manage to punch one of my co-workers in the face on the way out, mind you.”

One dark eyebrow arched high. “He deserve it?”

“Likely more than, but it was enough for the moment.”

A rough slap took him between the shoulders, and then his hand scruffed him about the neck before Hux could fall flat on his face. “Good job, buddy!” And then, a little more seriously, “But if I let you go now, you think you can stand?”

Hux hadn’t even realised he was still holding on. With some difficulty – and no small embarrassment – he extracted his hand from Dameron’s elbow, held his spine stiff even as he swayed. “Sorry.”

A shrug, and his grin was back. “Happy to help, you know me.” Still, there was clear concern in the tilt of his head. “But I will get you that cup of tea.”

Drawing a deep breath through his nose, Hux exhaled it slowly through his mouth. “So you were serious,” he said, and even managed to be conversational about it. “Leia Organa and Nahani Gillen are coming _here_.”

Dark eyes flicked upwards, generous lips turning now to brief from. “Well, that’s what the Senator said. And I tell you what, when that woman tells me to jump? I don’t even ask how high, I just make sure I get as high as I can. And then some.”

Even with Dameron’s easy words, another chill swept over him. “What’s she going to say when she sees Kylo?”

“Ah – well.” He paused, a little too long. “I guess…I won’t tell her, if you don’t?”

Hux supposed it was his uncle’s job either way. But then he wondered if he could really expect Senator Gillen to plead for his life now he was no longer on her staff.

 

*****

 

Hux stood silent as he observed the beginning of the senate shuttle’s landing cycle. At his side, Rey stood with the same wordless quiet. She’d also had taken his hand, entirely without asking. He let her have it. The justification was simple enough: just a way of masking the fact it probably would have been shaking, otherwise.

“I don’t like her.”

The whisper had him turning a sharp look upon her. “What?”

But she didn’t look to him, eyes fixed instead upon the ship, and the acute angle it had taken on its last approach. In profile, her face was a simple, almost gamin thing, long dark hair pulled back in a collection of uneven knots. “Senator Gillen,” she said, and did not once blink. “She’s scary.”

Something jolted loose in his stomach, cold and strange. “You’ve met her?”

“No.” Her hand closed tighter still around his own. “I’ve just seen her in holos.”

Looking away himself to the ship, again, he debated his reply. What he gave her was as carefully edited as any speech he’d given within the walls of the senate buildings. “I like her very much, Rey.”

“I know you do.” When he glanced down, it was to meet large eyes, somehow sad and weary both. “She likes you, too.”

He couldn’t be sure how to answer that. But then it did not seem to matter, for the shuttle had at last settled down upon the landing pad like a bird of prey, folding back its extended wings. As he glanced back the landing bay yawned open, the ramp extending in quick concertina. Two strangers emerged first; bodyguards of those within, for all their weapons remained concealed. And then, but a few steps behind: two women, straight-backed and strong, stepping quick and in near-harmony as they descended into the warm humidity of Yavin 4.

Immediately he found his eyes drawn to Leia Organa; it seemed only natural, given the magnetism of the woman, one who always drew others to her powerful orbit. But Hux did not linger long there. Already he felt the draw instead towards Nahani Gillen – and when he rose from his low bow, it was to find her pale eyes fixed upon his, hands outstretched, moving towards him.

“Brendol.”

The sound of her voice alone was like a blade drawn across his throat, blood pressure dropping to nothing, head swimming, the world seemingly vanished from beneath his feet. But he moved forward all the same, felt the warmth of his fingers close around his own as though they would always be his anchor.

“Senator Gillen,” he said, very hoarse. And her smile was brilliant, bright and burning and utterly consuming.

“It is good to see you,” she said, low-voiced and lovely; even as he made reluctantly to draw his hands back, her long fingers tightened again. “How have you been?”

“I…”

“Nahani.” Something flickered in those eyes, a shadow across the sun – but then she was smiling again, looking to where Organa had appeared, now with Skywalker at her side. Hux had not seen a moment of their reunion. Already he was looking back to Gillen when Organa added, more pointed now, “We should go inside.”

“We should indeed,” Skywalker said, with oddly expansive welcome. But there was something strange about his own bright eyes when he extended a hand towards his unknown guest. “Senator Gillen?”

Though she let Hux’s hands fall, she made no motion to take that of Skywalker, only inclining her pale head in acknowledgement instead. She also slowed when Hux made the attempt to follow two steps behind her.

They ended up in a place that was not the same chamber where Skywalker had first taken him. It proved instead a much larger meeting space, and at its centre sat a great wooden table. Round and thick, it had clearly been taken entire from some great old tree. Hux had seen nothing of its type or size in even these dense forests. Stepping deeper into the unexpected coolness of the space, he could not help but press his hands to it, marvelling. And for a moment, again, he could remember so clearly the great dark woods of Arkanis, not seen since he’d been scarcely more than five years of age.

“It is lovely, isn’t it?”

When Hux looked up, it was to find his words were quite gone, again. In this place, in her presence, he could sense an entire life – one that had always been just out of his reach, even when he’d been close. At her faint smile, sudden fear took him hard, and dragged him low.

But he kept his voice even, the reluctant skill of one long trained to perfect oratory. “Are you here to escort me back to Coruscant?”

The shake of her head wad but faint, her pale eyes locked upon his own. “I am on my way to Uyter.” The pale head inclined, her smile for a moment almost shy. “And I could take you with me.”

For a long moment he could only stare, as if gravity had given out, along with basic oxygen. And then he whispered, desperate and hoarse. “What?”

“Brendol.” One slim hand rose, gently curved about his face. “It doesn’t matter what your father has done,” she said, very soft, and at his choking breath she shook her head, her smile returned, and so very lovely. “Senator Organa has made sure that the actions of neither your father nor her son will hold you back from what you have worked so long for.”

Only when her hand fell away could he breathe, again. Mute, now, Hux could only turn to Organa with frank disbelief. In turn she gave a brief nod of her own, dark eyes watchful, hair pulled away from her face in a complicated coronet of thick braids. “Ben has already made clear that he took you without permission,” she said, and then -- a faint flicker of some odd emotion moved across her features, unreadable and too quick. “He made a statement that a disturbance in the Force led him to remove you without permission from Coruscant, before your father made his escape.”

Incredulity gave him back his tongue. “That’s a _legal defence_?” he said, more demanding than he’d intended. “A _disturbance_ in the _Force_?”

Her lips thinned. “It is when you’re a Skywalker.” One hand rose, forbidding for all its small size. “But you do not need to concern yourself with that at the moment. Between Ben’s statement and Nahani’s sponsorship, you are legally entitled to go to Uyter.”

“But what about Kylo?” The words broke loose before he’d even thought them to himself. “What does this mean for him? Is he in some kind of trouble?”

She only blinked, just once. “Ben will be fine.” Tilting her head, she remained so watchful, and Hux knew again why she had been at the forefront of a victorious rebellion force. “He’s given you a choice, Hux.”

His hands tightened on the table even as his head blanked out again, just for a moment. And when he shook it clear, glancing around the mostly empty chamber, he realised for the first time that Rey was not there with them.

 _But neither is Kylo. And we all know why_.

His throat had turned dry, and so very tight. “Does he know?” he asked. “That Senator Gillen is here?”

“No.”

Her answer, so short and deliberate, had him looking downwards like a chastised child. But there, he could see again his own hands, spread open over the table. The lines of growth radiating outwards from beneath his fingers, making them look so small against the weight of years upon years, built upon the sprouting of a single seed.

He looked up, eyes dry, voice very steady. “I will go with Senator Gillen to Uyter. Thank you for your help, Senator Organa.”

“ _No_!”

They all turned, very nearly as one – and a small figure stood silhouetted in the doorway, legs planted wide, hands balled to fists, face blotchy and red.

“Rey.” Organa’s surprise had a distinctly disapproving cast to it, one almost entirely maternal. “What are you doing in here?”

But her eyes, bright and burning with salt, were fixed upon Hux alone. “You _can’t do this_!”

“All right.” Skywalker already moved quick across the room – almost too quick, his motions quick and graceful. “Rey? We need to go outside.”

But she had already darted away, skipping across the room like a cannonball, coming to short stop before him. “Hux,” and her hands balled in his robes, pulled him forward even as he did not drop to her level. She didn’t care, staring up at him with pure clear rage. “Are you really going leave Benny like _this_? And me! Don’t you even care about _me_ , too?”

Sudden weariness overtook him then, and he didn’t even have the energy to start plucking the borrowed clothes free of her tearing grip. “I never said I was a nice person, Rey.”

“It’s not about what’s _nice_!” She actually attempted to _shake_ him, and for a dreadful moment he felt the air about him shift, contract, drawing tight about arm and thigh and throat. “It’s about what’s _right_!”

“Okay. All right. That’s _enough_.” And already it was failing, fading, pulling away – and Skywalker was on his knees, turning the little girl to face him, hands on her hunched and shaking shoulders. “Rey. _Rey._ This isn’t about you.”

And when she looked up, Hux was discomforted to see she appeared but seconds from outright sobs. “Isn’t it?”

“Rey—”

And then she was gone – running, blind and furious out of the room. In her wake Skywalker closed his eyes, made no attempt to retake his feet. Then Organa moved to his side, one small hand strong upon his shoulder.

“Luke,” she advised, in a tone that brooked no argument, “let her work it off.” Then, even closer to a command almost military, “And I should like to see my son.”

But even as she spoke to her brother, those dark eyes flicked over to him. The gesture was as sharp and sudden as a stab to the gut in some backend alley. But she did not waste her time on words. Instead they were already moving away, together; both so very small in stature, but great enough to change the course of the galaxy entire, together.

“They’re extraordinary people.”

Nahani Gillen was no telepath. He supposed that was why he felt no unease at the way she read his thoughts. With a sigh he turned back to her, found her as remarkable as she’d been the moment she had stepped down from the shuttle. The pale hair was different, he noticed, waved away from her face and caught up in a golden shimmer atop her head. Long silver earrings dangled from both ears, and he thought how odd to see her with jewellery, though her long wide-sleeved gown was familiar enough.

And the he shook his head. The more things changed, the more they would stay the same. “It’s certainly been a strange few days, here with them,” he said, quite honest. It earned him a low chuckle, and a faint shake of her head.

“I can only imagine.” Reaching forward, again, one hand patted over his. “I am glad you chose to come with me.”

Her touch felt almost as a benediction. “I’ve wanted it for so long,” he said, simple in its truth. “And I’ve worked hard for it.”

“That is why you have earned this.” He only just resisted the temptation to follow, as Gillen withdrew her hand. “I should warn you, though.”

His brow furrowed. “Of what?”

“Chadri is still amongst my staff.”

“ _Why_?”

A slow, strange smile blossomed across her lovely features. “You shall see,” she said, quite mysterious – and then, she even _winked_. Startled, Hux at first had no reply. And then, he surrendered to a slight, small chuckle.

“Will I?”

“Oh, yes.” Rising, now, her easy humour slipped away like the sun behind a cloud. “We have much to discuss, yet. But we can do it upon the transport.”

The sudden twinge of fear rang a discordant note through him, as sharp as a fresh vibroblade. “We’re going _now_?”

“I am only borrowing a transport signed out in Leia’s name. We can go on to Uyter, and send it back to collect her on its return to Coruscant.” Again, a faint smile played at her lips. “Much as she does enjoy spending time with her family, she cannot be gone long from the Senate. Not this close to the vote, and its dissolution.”

And for all his mind warred with this sudden shift in reality, his thoughts had shifted too easily to their old configuration: to the world of the senate and the New Republic, which but a scant few weeks ago had been all that truly concerned him. “Do you really think we have a chance?” he asked, quiet and urgent. “To bring it to Uyter?”

Her hand moved, again, settled light upon one slim shoulder, still dressed as he was in the borrowed clothes of an apprenticed Jedi. “With you to aid me, yes. What we want will come to pass.”

He only just resisted the urge to lean into her touch. “I’m hardly so influential.”

“We all start from humble beginnings, Brendol.” Her softness soon returned to a sharp efficiency. “Do you have any belongings you need to collect?”

“No, but…” Again: that odd, frantic feeling of before. Within seconds he had it quashed, pushed down, buried beneath the façade of calm cool collection. He’d had such long practice at doing so. “I just need to say goodbye, first.”

Gillen allowed a gracious incline of her head. “I will wait for you, at the ship.”

It left him dizzied and squinting, to step back out into the bright sun. Even half-blinded, he pressed on, stepping across the courtyards until he reached the cooler shadows of the arcades. Oddly, he almost immediately ran into Luke Skywalker.

“Have you found Rey?”

“She’s blocking me.” Shaking his head, lips pressed to thinness, he added with tight calm, “Ben should never have taught her how to do that.”

Hux’s shrug was calculated in its carelessness, for all his heart tightened. “Surely it has its uses.”

“For an eight year old child?” But the sharpness vanished a moment later, blown out on a sudden sigh. “I’m sorry, Hux. None of this is your fault.” And his own guilt only grew when the man added, “You didn’t ask for any of this.”

“Well.” With his earlier aplomb now quite faded away, Hux shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the next, and resisted the urge to look back to the path that would lead him away from this damned place. “If not for Kylo, I wouldn’t be here. And I don’t mean here on Yavin 4.” He even managed a smile, tight and taut though it was. “He _did_ save my life.”

“And for good reason, I would think.” His hand shot out, grasping and terribly strong, taking Hux’s own before he could even think to recoil. “May the Force be with you, Brendol Hux.”

As he withdrew his hand, released as suddenly as it had been taken, Hux found himself oddly touched – for all the odd frisson still dancing electric-sharp along his skin. “Thank you,” and he was also somewhat surprised to find he meant it.

And then, without even being asked, Skywalker gave a brisk nod. “He’s in the infirmary.” Even as Hux sourly thought how nice it would be to leave the presence of telepaths, he listened close to Skywalker’s directions, simple and telling. Then he was moving, leaving the man alone, even as his mind rebelled at the thought he’d spent so much time in the presence of genuine legend.

But he moved only from one, to the other; when he pressed the ajar door of the infirmary open, it was to find a wide open space occupied by only Organa, seated by her son. In a corner bed they clustered close, dark heads bent towards one another like orbiting singularities. When standing side by side, seemed impossible that they should be related; he so large and gangling, she so small and compact. But the power of them – so painfully similar, it could be but emphasised by seeing them together.

She glanced up first. Her dark eyes, so very like her son’s, were instead very different in their cool assessment. And then she was leaning back, raising an eyebrow in something not quite like a welcome.

“Ah.” That sound alone would have said enough, but then she spoke his name, and it was worse. “Mr. Hux.”

“Just Hux is fine, Senator Organa,” he said, slightly too stiff. When she snorted, his lips moved to a frown. “I don’t mean to interrupt.”

“But you want to speak to my son.” Her eyes flickered down to where Kylo, oddly, kept his silence. “Alone, as I figure it.”

Shifting his weight, Hux thought better of answering something that was not entirely a question. He didn’t even know what it was she asked of him, demanding as the expression in her eyes remained. But then she rose, and he only just resisted the urge to lean forward in low bow. Leia Organa had shed her royal titles with the fall of her home planet, but she would always retain the bearing of a crown princess.

When she had gone, Hux took her seat and felt somehow very small in her place. Kylo’s dark eyes remained watchful upon him. They were not clouded with drugs, now. But they were almost preternaturally quiet. He wondered if his mother had already told him Gillen was here. If she had already told him that Hux had made his decision.

He had not been born to feel so small. But then, the senate had given him practice enough at that, over the years.

“I’m sorry,” Kylo croaked, sudden, eyes sudden bright blaze. “But then…I’m not sorry. At all.”

Hux’s tongue moved out, rasped over dry lips. “For bringing me here?” And it hurt, to ask, even as he made it sound as nothing more than sharp demand. “Did you really know my father was going to defect back to the Order?”

His eyes rolled back into his head, as if quite disbelieving of Hux’s blindness. “No,” he said, and then he turned his head again – weary, this time. “But I knew _something_ was going to happen.” His pause came unnatural, harsh. “And I couldn’t leave you there amongst it,” he said, and now each word was sudden, pulsing. “You can’t go back there, Hux. You _can’t_.”

“I’m not.” Calm had overtaken him now, certain and cold. “I’m going to Uyter.”

Apparently Organa had told him nothing of this – for he only stared, eyes too wide, threatening to swallow the world whole. And, leaning back just a little, Hux folded his hands neatly into his lap, and started again.

“Nahani Gillen came here. With your mother.” Each word was carefully enunciated, as delineated and straightforward as one of his presentation slides. “She’s leaving again, now. And I am going with her.”

Kylo snorted, rude and derisive. “It’s a mistake.”

“What?”

His had shot out, closed with bruising strength around one slim wrist. “Stay here,” he said, and clenched tighter. “With me.”

With a sudden flare of anger, Hux yanked back, moving once more to his feet. “What am I here, but a curiosity? The Force isn’t with me. Not the way it is with you, and yours.” Even as his breathing turned hard, harsh, he pulled back, moved to a tone more formal than that of the friends they might have once become. “I…yes, I’m grateful, Kylo. Without you, I would be dead. Without you, I’d probably be incarcerated for my father’s crimes.”

“Yes.” His face had turned mask-like and still, eyes glittering and dark. “Without me, you’d be nothing, now.”

His own scowl burned bright as a lit saber. “But this isn’t about _you_ , Kylo,” he said, harsh and hot. “It’s about me. The fact that Senator Gillen wants me for _me_.” Then he closed his eyes tight, breathed deep, wondered when he’d lost his precious control. When he opened them again, his voice had returned to even keel, slow and steady. “Kylo. I remember what you said. And I believe you meant it.” And now he sought, found, held on tight to the low cajoling tones of an orator at his finest. “But this isn’t my place. I don’t belong here.”

His flat expression matched perfectly his words. “And you really think you belong with _her_.”

“I’d be making my own way, so yes, I do.” He didn’t mean for his voice to break on the next words. That might have been why it did. “And it might be better. For us to be apart.”

Kylo’s eyes widened, and Hux turned his head against the sudden rise of guilt, bile in his throat.

“Because I do realise that _I_ did this to you—”

“You _didn’t_.” His surprise was almost as much as his hurt. “The dreams, Hux. They’re not your fault.”

“But he is me. In some way. In some reality.” He smiled, wide and without humour. “He hurt you. And he _liked_ doing it.” It twisted to sharp grimace. “And he’ll do it again.”

“Hux.” His hands on his arms pulled him around, drew him down. “You aren’t him.”

“I could be.”

“You won’t be,” Kylo said, and it was too harsh to be kind. “Not ever.”

They were kissing but a moment later – and then, Hux found himself dragged down on top of him. He had forgotten the _heat_ of that great body, a furnace stoked to furious burn.

But even as he pulled back from the inferno, Kylo surged upward. Hands that were too knowing for their inexperience shoved up underneath the tunic, belt breaking free. It burned against his skin, fingertips already moving over his nipples, pebbling to sudden aching hardness. And with a roll of hips, Hux felt hard promise pressing close against his ass.

“Kylo.” His own hips rocked back in traitorous return. “ _Don’t_.”

“You’re going to leave me.” One hand slid down, past the waistband of the borrowed trousers; calluses dragged over soft skin with delicious bite, and the palm of his hand was too warm by half where it cupped the swell of one slim buttock. And Kylo pressed him close, lips barely masking his teeth as he pressed the words to the jumping pulse in his bared throat. “You could at least give me _this_ , first. Like you promised.”

“I promised no such thing.” As he pulled back, shoving Kylo’s touch away, the bitterness of the words only turned deeper yet. “And it’s not a good thing, besides.” He beat hard at the front of the robes, as if that would shake out the wrinkles. “But it’s the _right_ thing, Kylo. And that’s what matters, now. I can’t help you. Your uncle can. But me? I can’t do a damn thing.”

But even as he turned, even as he walked away, Hux was left with nothing but the urge to look back. He could feel Kylo’s eyes on him with every step he took. But he did not look back. There would be time enough, later. He could call him over holo. Maybe they could even talk about it. And in the end it was likely they would see each other again, as the staffer of a senator, as the son of the same.

It had been a mistake and he knew it. But Hux made no move to correct it even though the opportunity still remained, eyes forward as he crossed the temple grounds for the last time. Somehow he could not regret that Dameron appeared as if from nowhere, smoothing back the riot of his dark hair. Hux even stopped, spoke without his voice breaking, and did not know how he managed such miracle.

“Have you seen Rey?”

From his sigh, Dameron was entirely up to date on the latest temple crisis. “No-one’s seen Rey.” His hands rose, fell. “But if you could wait a few hours—”

“We’re going now.” At the arch of his eyebrow, Hux softened his tone, and meant it. “Look, it…was good to meet you, Dameron.”

“ _Poe_.” Again, that over-friendly slap between his shoulders that might have been an assault, under other circumstances. “Stay safe, Red.”

With prim grace he brushed down the borrowed robes, with their broken belt, and wondered if he should have changed first. “It’s Hux.”

His grin was faintly sad. “Watch your back up there in the black, Red.”

Gillen waited for him upon the ramp, tall and sleek in her dark gown. As he rose towards her, one hand extended; he took it, again, entirely without thinking. It was cool and dry in his hands, the air of Yavin 4 already cycling out of the ship’s interior. Hux did not look back at the ramp rising. As Gillen let go he took his place, and did not look out the window either. Instead he kept his eyes only upon the back of the seat before him. Gillen had moved somewhere forward – but even as the pilot began to murmur of their lift-off she came back, took her place at his side.

And she smiled. “You’ve made the right choice,” she said, and it only twisted the knife a little deeper.

“But was it a choice?” he asked, through lips that still burned with the memory of Kylo’s own. And Gillen simply nodded, reached forward, and brushed loose hair away from his burning eyes.

“We always have a choice, Brendol.”

The hand dropped away, and she turned with it. Hux closed his eyes, felt the thrum of the engines moving up through his feet, his calves, his thighs and groin and chest and heart.

_(“But it exerts enough influence that sometimes we cannot be sure which choices belong to the Force, and which remain entirely our own.”)_

Only when the ship had risen beyond all return did Hux open his eyes to watch as he left first Yavin 4, and then his connection to the Force itself, behind.

The thought provided rather less comfort than he thought it should have.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I started this fic over a _year_ ago. That freaks me out. Especially as I've struggled so long with trying to find the worth in it. And, well, I am going through a very low period in my life right now, and I realised a week or so ago...that's probably a lot of what this story is about. Not knowing your place, or even that you deserve one in the world you live in. So, I suppose in that sense, I give up on trying to justify this as a fic anymore. It's just a story.
> 
> But thank you so, _so_ much to everyone who has read this far, and keeps reading, and then tells me so. I'm also kind of amused that Nahani Gillen, who I just stole as a character for plot purposes, in some ways basically has ended up being like Rae Sloane. I should read those books, goddammit. But: yeah. Here's some more of the story. It's very much a chapter about paralysis. But maybe we'll all get there, in the end.

“You seem troubled.”

At first he had no reply, eyes fixed upon the star field spread wide beyond his viewport. But he could only hold such contemplation for so long with the weight of her undivided attention upon him. Like a flower seeking the sun he turned, but kept his hands folded in careful lines upon his lap. “We left rather suddenly,” he said, at last, clear and slow. “And Kylo…well. Kylo was not entirely himself.” Here his voice took on a strange sheen, one as bright and opaque as the heat shields about the ship itself. “It could have been better. Our parting, I mean. For what it’s worth.”

So smoothly she took the seat at his side, as if it were but natural for her to be there. “He was not himself?”

“He…” Allowing his voice to trail off in such a way had never been an indulgence Hux had favoured, but his brow furrowed before he even realised he’d lost the words. “…I don’t know how to put it. But it’s a Force thing, I suppose.” He meant to snort with light derision; he winced to hear instead something rather like distress. “It does strange things to a person, apparently.”

“Did it do strange things to you?”

Odd as the question was, her lovely features held nothing but genuine concern. “I think I’m glad to be away from it,” Hux replied, still slow, still careful. “Being Force sensitive may be more trouble than it’s worth.”

Gillen leaned back in her chair, one hand rising as she pressed a sheaf of pale hair back behind one ear. “So it would seem,” she observed, her smile light, almost curious. “It’s interesting, though.”

“The Force?”

“That you call him Kylo.” Her lips curved odd about the name; even as he blinked to mask the sparking shiver down his spine, her shoulders moved in guileless shrug. “Ben Organa, I mean. As far as I can see, that’s the name everybody else uses.”

“Everybody but Kylo.” He wasn’t sure what brought the faint frown to his lips: the way she spoke the name, or the way she didn’t even acknowledge his father’s existence. “It’s how he introduced himself to me,” he added, sudden, harder than expected. “I figure if that’s what he wants, then he can have it.”

One eyebrow rose, slow and regal. “This boy who grew up with everything he ever wanted, you mean?”

The prickling sensation across his skin managed to hold both heat, and something else very very cold. “It’s just a name,” he said, too light, retreating from a battle he didn’t even know might be fought. And she smiled, lovely and sad, the faintest memory of a woman he had barely known.

“And you’d know the power of a name, wouldn’t you?”

Tight-lipped, Hux turned away. The strange coil of his stomach had all the weight and heft of a slumbering serpent, one that might be venomous only if awakened. “Has there been any news of my father?” he asked. Gillen paused, if only for a moment.

“Not in the news.”

Hux looked back. “And elsewhere?”

“We’ll worry about that on Uyter.” Her voice had turned gentle, again, the whisper of the sea returning to its tidal pools. And with it, too, Hux knew again the vague memory of lullabies, of hand-knitted blankets tucked tight around small limbs.

Her hand rested light upon his arm. “You should get some sleep, Brendol.”

“I think I’ve had enough sleep,” he said, and did not move away from her touch. She only smiled wider, patted him gently there.

“We’re going from Outer Rim to Mid.” Withdrawing her hand, she tucked her legs closer beneath her skirt, though she did not yet rise. “There’s time enough for a little rest.”

“I’d really rather not.” Clearing his throat, he tasted something like bitter gall; he swallowed it down without flinching. “I must have missed a great number of things, while I was on Yavin 4. If there’s a datapad I could borrow, I could perhaps start bringing myself up to speed.”

She only watched him for what seemed a moment too long. “You really are dedicated, aren’t you.”

“I always figured that was part of my charm.” He did not realise the chill of his words until she, again, raised one eyebrow. A faint flush began to creep up his cheeks even as he did not break their gaze. “Senator.”

A faint laugh, and now she stood, her smile ever so slightly crooked. “Lady Bulenwa has been asking after you, actually. Speaking of _charm_ , I mean.”

Diplomatic though he managed to be, his flush only deepened. “We did have something of an unusual working relationship, I suppose.”

“Oh, Bren.” Again she pushed at her hair, her pale eyes taking on a sudden spark. “Think of all this as a temporary and unexpected holiday. Don’t go rushing back into your work just yet.”

“I’d very much like to, all the same.”

“I know you would,” she said, and for all the lightness of her words, they brooked no further argument. “But it can wait until we reach Uyter.” As he blinked, she shrugged, again. “Though I could probably find you something to read in the meantime, if you really won’t take the opportunity to sleep.”

The words didn’t quite seem to fit in his mouth, clearly though he spoke them. “I’d appreciate that.”

She disappeared, though only for a moment; when she returned, she placed in his hands a datapad. Yet as he flicked it on, he discovered it held no connectivity to either the holonet or the world beyond the ship. Even as his lips turned downward, he told himself with strict sharpness that it was hardly unusual; while ship to ship and ship to ground communications were maintained in hyperspace, the relays associated with the holonet were usually too finicky to force through the speed at which the ships travelled. It still felt strange. Especially as there was only one book – as such it was – loaded onto the device.

“You’ve read them before?”

He flicked through the separate volumes, stomach tight and taut for all he hadn’t eaten in hours. “Well, yes,” he murmured, not yet looking up. “But they are a favourite.” When he glanced up now, he wondered why his abdomen grew only all the more uncomfortable. “I’m sure it won’t be much of a chore to read them again.”

Her smile was as lovely as the galaxies smeared to unfocused light beyond the transparisteel. “I’m sure it won’t be.” Smoothing her gown, again, she nodded back along the cabin’s short aisle. “Personally, I am going to try and get some sleep. Do enjoy your history, Brendol.”

As she turned, he looked down once more. The Tarkin journals lay before him. He’d practically memorised them when he’d been ten years old; reading them now would just be going over the lines, treading familiar paths that he already knew the limits of. The idea might have appealed to him but a few days previous. But with the scent of Yavin 4 still on his skin, his hair, his clothes—

“Senator?”

She paused for what seemed a long moment, before turning back. Her smile remained as bright as always. “Yes, Brendol?”

“I wouldn’t suppose there’s anything I could change into now?” His tongue passed over his lips; somewhere, beneath the earthy mineral taste of Yavin’s water, he could sense something like fire. “And if the ‘fresher facilities would be available to me?”

“But of course.”

Gillen did not even have her aide-de-camp show him. As he stepped quick in her shadow, Hux had the odd feeling that everything had been prepared for him – but then, she _had_ come specifically to Yavin 4 on his behalf.

“Are any of my things in Coruscant still there?” At her glance back, her brow furrowed, eyes tilted in something like pity, Hux felt a sudden flush of renewed humiliation. “Not that I expect you would need to know these things—”

“Brendol.” Though she came close, this time she did not lay her hand on him. But her eyes, so brilliant and so blue, swallowed him like the Arkanian sea. “I came here to Yavin 4 for _you_.” Her smile, lovely and soft, shimmered as bright as any supernova. “Your things are in storage, and I brought them with me. You can sort through them as you like when we get to Uyter.”

The refresher allowed him to take a short, efficient sonic: his usual routine came back to him easily enough. And yet, for all he’d been away from it for only a matter of days, somehow he almost missed the strangeness, the backwards nature of the temple. But there was nothing for it, except to encourage away all such extraneous feeling, to let it be lost under the faint, insistent vibration of the ‘fresher unit.

As he dressed, he discovered the clothes provided were not his own, and permitted himself some disappointment. But they proved well-fitted to his frame, even down to the shoes. Carefully reordering his hair, he paused before his reflection, and found his breath suddenly stolen away.

Even with only himself here before him, his recollection of the dreams hit hard – for he had seen the general from this very same perspective. But he was not the same, here. Hux himself was younger: his face less hard, the eyes less blunt. He remained yet a person still with the promise of youth, without the stigma of catastrophic failure.

_You still have a life left to live._

Hux found no sign of the Senator when he re-entered the main cabin. While he understood she had likely retired to a private berth, as intimated, he felt an odd twinge. It could almost be called a sense of abandonment that – one that he’d not known even when his father’s flight had become known. And it wasn’t as if she had gone far, and certainly not out of his reach.

But such fanciful thoughts were pointless luxury. Though he had only his Imperial history to read, Hux seated himself properly in his chair, and bent his head to studious task. He had said he would not sleep, and had no particular desire to try. But the words blurred before him; they made no sense, and he had now no desire to seek it from them. Instead he closed his eyes, head back, and simply waited.

Though he remembered nothing of actual sleep, the faint murmuring of rising voices brought him back to something like reality. The jolt as they dropped out of lightspeed finished the job, and as the voices faded Hux turned to see a great blue-green planet before them. The odd tightening of his chest burned; Arkanis had always looked much the same from space, for the little he’d ever seen it from such angle. But Uyter had a much milder weather system. With more landmass, too, it had always been less enslaved to the water cycle that gave Arkanis her endless restless oceans, the rain and wind that never settled to less than a drizzle, and the constant stiff breeze that was often cold enough to cut to the bone.

A glance about the cabin yielded no sign of Gillen, though he told himself again – and sternly so – that for all her personal mission to collect him, and her apparent sponsorship, he could hardly expect her such continued personal attention. He worked for her, and not the other way around.

Such stern reminder allowed him to turn his attention to the atmosphere that the transport had begun to breach. Tightening the belt he had already done up, he made sure both his own seat, and that before him, were steady. But as he did so, his attention snagged on a piece of flimsi, sticking out of the pocket. There was no real thought in his mind while he stared at it. He did not even know why he did it at all, for all he knew the transport would be returning to Yavin 4 to collect Leia Organa afterwards. No doubt cleaning droids would destroy it long before its return, if it were even found.

Still, he wrote it, quick and clean in his sparse hand.

_Kylo,_

_I find I miss your stupid face already. I hope I get to see it again._

A moment passed, and it then the note was half-crumpled, as if ashamed of its own existence. Hux pushed it deep into into the pocket of the seat before him, as if that might mask what really should be destroyed. And then, looking to where the plasma of re-entry had begun to burn away, he watched the transport break through the lower ceiling, bringing them into a landing trajectory. As it dipped lower, he could see now orderly lines of fields and pasture; this land had never had much in the way of mountains – unlike restless oceanic Arkanis, or the constant oozing lava of a tectonic nightmare like Mustafar.

Uyter was instead a planet of lazy geologic change, the land and slow and easy as its people. He fancied he could see them now, even from so high, tending their crops while not even caring if they would be the ones to harvest that which they had planted. Nahani Gillen seemed so much the same: her hair like wheat, body as long and lean as the stalks that reached for the sky, golden and strong beneath the endless blue of the Uyter sky.

But he found himself wondering what she wished of the earth she had tilled, and what she hoped might grow from such carefully chosen seed.

Visdic itself now spanned beneath them, the transport coming in a tight circle towards the spaceport to the south of the city itself. It seemed mostly constructed of old and somewhat fanciful stone buildings, for all clearly it had been modernised enough – or so Hux understood, from his work in Coruscant. With hands tight on the armrests, he closed his eyes, and did not even really know why instinct told him to do so. It made no difference; the solid landing but a moment later heralded an unavoidable return to real life. Uyter would be utterly unlike the liminal space that had been Yavin 4. His time there already felt far distant – even more so than his actual dreams. And he knew a bitter taste in his mouth as he opened his eyes, one very much like ozone and thick venous blood.

“We are here,” Gillen said, and her sudden voice took down him like new gravity. “And it’s a lovely day, too.”

Or at least, it _had_ been a lovely day; stepping from the airlock, Hux noted that time had progressed on to late afternoon, given the length of the deepening light. The air also held a sweet and kindly scent, one clearly sensed even over both the exhaust of the transport, and the typical industrial miasma of any shipping hub. When he shielded his eyes, looked to the south, Hux saw only an endless span of distant golden fields, swaying softly as a distant sea in the light breeze. Even from ground level they appeared to go on forever. The great oceans of Arkanis had always seemed much the same to him, as a child.

“Visdic is of course just a small village, compared to Coruscant – or even Scarparus Port.” So close she had come, and he had not even heard her approach. “But I think you’ll like it here.”

But he could not turn to her. The unharvested wheat held an almost hypnotic sway, and he followed it again, and again. “There’s little humidity,” he said, and then cleared his throat. “I suppose that helps.”

“Ah, well.” That had him turning, and sharply so; but she only smiled, the strange flatness of her earlier words quite evaporated. “Yavin 4 is a world unto itself, I should think. And it’s one best left behind.”

Hux could make no reply to that; she had already turned, a svelte and imposing figure in her trailing gaberwool coat. Even as he moved to follow, he found himself already crowded by her entourage. While he had been accustomed to such on Coruscant, he knew not one of these people; with their quick and curt bearing, it left Hux feeling constricted, somehow almost claustrophobic.

Her voice broke through like clarion bell, for all her people verged nearly on the silent. “You’re with me, Hux. The speeder at the front.”

Surprise took his manners. “Really?”

She actually flashed a smile, bright and yet somehow harassed. “I know we’re leaving formalities by the wayside, for the meantime,” she said, “but the situation is unusual. Still, I feel you’ll find your place here soon enough.”

The pilot appeared skilled in tight corners and quick turns; the narrow twisted alleys would be no mean feat to master. But Hux left only little consideration for such ability as they skirted through the city. It seemed more important to note that it was indeed small, but very lovely; for all it had been built of some rugged granite, vines and creepers and climbing blossoms covered great swathes of stone. It left him with the oddest sense that the forest had encroached forward upon the city, as if seeking to take it back within itself.

A great complex of buildings passed by on their left; though the speeder did not slow, the tableau seemed to go on forever. “Is that where the Senate would sit?”

“ _Will_ sit,” she said, rather too sharp, “and yes. There’s work yet to be done, but we are an industrious people.” This time, when she smiled, it seemed almost painted on by a careful hand. “There will be time enough during the transfer of power to complete the necessary infrastructure.”

Hux felt his lips downturn, if only in his mind. “It seems very busy already.”

“As I said, we are industrious.” The click of her nails upon the arm of her seat came quick as blastershot, and then ceased. “And also particularly stubborn. Uyter has never been well-suited to sudden change. Especially that which we did not ask for.”

She said nothing more than that. Though Hux had intended to leave her to her chosen silence, it mattered little; they shortly came upon a massive, sprawling house, and the speeder drew to a stop at the height of its arcing driveway.

“This is where my staff reside – well, those who do not have residences of their own.” Though she had stepped down from the speeder, after first indicating he should do the same, she made no motion towards said house. “You’ll likely feel in time that you’d like to move on, and I’ll do everything to aid you in finding a good house for you and your family.” Now she turned, extended one arm wide. “Perhaps in the country, just beyond the city. The air is very good, and there are fields and streams for the children to play in.”

His brow furrowed. “What children?”

“Your children.” And she nodded, as if agreeing with her own words. “Children are precious, Bren. They are our legacy. We need them.”

He could only stare, feeling as though the entire planet had shifted from beneath his feet. “I’m not even married.”

Her smile, not quite pitying, remained lovely yet. “We can arrange that,” she said, as light as the touch upon his shoulder; her gaze, however, had turned deeply considering, eyes moving over his form in a fashion not quite critical. “I’m sure you’ll be quite the catch, once you are established.”

With no words for that, he looked again to the house; for all its simplicity of architecture, a deep chill began an uneasy settling in his bones. But Gillen only smiled, again, white fingers working to secure the collar of her coat. “Now, I must go back to the city to attend some business of my own, but the household droids will settle you into your rooms here.” The sudden embrace brought with it the scent of flowers and soft rains. “I’m very glad you’ve come home, Bren.”

Again, she gave him no time for any real response. Already she made her way back to the speeder, which pulled away almost the moment the door latched closed. It left him oddly bereft, alone upon the stairs.

“Brendol Hux Jr.” The voice came from just inside the opened doors, level and simple. “Welcome to Mauro House.”

He kept silent, for a long moment. He’d been familiar with droids from a very young age, but noted with dull surprise these were a model he would not have expected to encounter in a senator’s staffing house. It resembled on first glance nothing so much as one of the old KX-series enforcer droids – those used by the old Imperial forces during the last days of the Empire. It was common enough knowledge that some of those had survived the war, and were now kept by the First Order; Hux had even seen one himself, but they were rare enough to leave this one a surprise.

Yet on more careful examination, Hux realised it to be smaller in stature – as it came closer, he saw it was barely more than his own height. And he frowned deeper still. For all he’d been away from the Order for years, he had not realised Arakyd Industries had taken any interest in manufacture or design for the civilian market. In fact he’d been under the distinct impression they’d gone out with the Empire itself.

The droid spoke with the perfect bland tones of one who had not been programmed to be disobeyed. “Will you step inside?”

Even as the opened doors remained beckoningly wide, Hux continued only to watch. “What’s your designation?”

“I am M-4RT.” One arm extended, into the depths of the house. “This way, sir.”

It was only a service droid. The more Hux examined it, the more obvious it became that it concealed no overt weaponry in the spindle-like limbs. But he’d had enough interest and education in nano-engineering to know size was never a true indicator of potential.

At any rate, it proved a clever enough thing when it came to this task. While it had Hux walk before it, even though he clearly did not, could not know where he was going, it still managed to easily lead him where he needed to go, without once stepping in front.

The house itself seemed somehow both large and small; it had short corridors and narrow passageways that ran like mazes, though Hux did not once see another person. He’d also heard nothing of anyone else by the time the droid stopped before a heavy wooden door, its lock a thick alusteel panel with both biometric and combination keys on its blinking display.

“Please place your palm on the pad, and I will key the lock to your designation.”

Hux stared at it for a long moment, and did not move.

“Mr. Hux—”

“All right.” With the palm flat on the screen, he said no more. The droid paused, then spoke again.

“Mr. Hux, sir, your sweat—”

Wordless, Hux yanked it back, wiped it on his trouser leg. He replaced it perhaps a little too hard. But it beeped its acceptance, and a moment later he entered a code to match. Make it something random, the droid intoned. Something unrelated to himself.

Hux put in Ben Solo’s birthdate. He hadn’t even realised he knew it.

The small suite of rooms would be adequate enough, he supposed. The main door led into a sitting area, which had a small sundeck looking out over the enclosed gardens below; for all the city encroached upon every side, it seemed quiet enough. The ubiquitous greenery, hanging gardens upon every surface, apparently had some value as acoustic baffles. That same sweet scent hung over everything here too, apparently common to the city wherever one was.

An office was set to one side, a bedroom to the other, with a small and utilitarian refresher attached. Hux barely looked at it, told himself not to think of how the bed seemed too large for only one person. Instead he moved to the office, activating the holoscreen; as it turned out, the same code which unlocked the door gave him access to the system.

But only so much.

“I can’t comm out.”

The droid continued to have no emotional reaction, just as programmed. “It will be organised at a later time.”

He jabbed the comm button again, to the same dead effect. “I want to speak to the Senator.”

“I will be sure to inform her of your desire to speak with her.”

“I can do it myself.”

Arguing with a droid was as pointless as trying to talk sense with the slowest students of any class he’d ever attended. “I am not authorised to give you that access,” it said, and yet Hux could not hold back his frustration.

“Why not?”

It actually blinked. “The need to know such reasons is not within the parameters of my programming.”

And he snorted, turned away. “Of course it isn’t,” he muttered, and hit the screen with the heel of his hand, one last time. It cheerily informed him yet again that there was no access to the holonet or comm network at this time. He didn’t look away. “Is there anything else I need to know?”

“The Senator has arranged to meet with you in the morning. She wishes you to take this opportunity to settle in here, and to have some rest.”

“I slept all the way here,” he muttered, though the droid offered no opinion on the matter. Turning at last, he said, evenly enough, “Am I permitted outside the house?”

“You are welcome to explore Visdic at your leisure.”

He thought that he should. Somehow the thought turned his stomach. Looking instead to the wall, he took in what dominated there: a painting of Uyter. Green and pastoral, with clear blue skies over its fields of grain; the herd animals grazed nearby, blissfully unware of their ultimate fate.

“Is there a communal dining room?”

The droid nodded its assent. “You may take your meals with the others, or have one delivered to you here.”

“How many others are there?”

“The Senator’s greater staff have not yet come from Coruscant.” Hux’s gaze narrowed, but a moment later it answered the question. “You have three other housemates at this time.”

“I’ll have something sent up.”

“Shall I show you how to use the household system?”

Something about his skin felt too tight, uncomfortably stretched across the bones beneath. “I’m sure I’ll figure it out,” he said, and indicated the door. “You’re dismissed.”

“I can be summoned again as necessary.”

“I’m sure you can be.”

But he was not hungry. Looking about the room, again, he frowned; Gillen had said his things from Coruscant were in storage, but they did not appear to be here. But Hux had no desire to call the droid back. Instead he stripped himself bare, stood in front of the half-mirror in the bedroom. He’d always been too tall and too thin, though he was hardly the gangling skeleton he’d been in his youth. But his father had removed him from the Order, from his training, just as his adolescent muscles had begun to harden into something more wiry and strong.

Still, the commandant had also made sure he remained fit. There had been many a long run through the choking air of Coruscant, but never with the aid of a rebreather to filter out the worst of the low-lying smog. Hux had been permitted few sweets in his diet, and the former commandant had certainly never encouraged the use of cigarras or any other psychotropic substance. He’d kept his son lean and hungry, even as he himself remained corpulent and careless, his features as soft and stodgy as half-melted wax.

Hux ran his hands over his chest, down to his thighs. His cock lay quiescent between his thighs, half-hidden in the neat thatch of dark red hair. Even as he stared at it without pause, he did not quite know why he bothered. Fingers closed around it, then: one, two, three pumps of his hand, each more half-hearted than the last. Letting go with a sigh instead, Hux crossed the room to the ‘fresher. There he took a long shower, in tepid water; while he tried to make it last, tried to make it hot, luxuriating would never come easy to one with a history such as his own.

When dried off, he padded back into the bedroom. Nude, still, he felt no desire to change back into the clothes he had come in. There was no desire, either, to search through the cupboards and drawers for more of a stranger’s belongings. The bed beckoned instead, though he did not even climb in. Hux only lay down, on his back, and closed his eyes. He was not tired. He did not think he would sleep.

But, of course, he _dreamed_.

 

*****

 

_The_ Finalizer _had settled into orbit around what must be Snoke’s current base of operations. They have not yet been given instructions for any kind of rendezvous; they have only had their presence acknowledged, and nothing more._

_Hux is tired of this. He does not want to be here. Kylo is gone from his immediate life. It would seem only appropriate that these damned dreams should go the same way. But it is as it has always been: he is but witness, and a silent one at that. He cannot remove himself, no more than he can consent to being here at all._

_From what he can gather, the general has spent much of his recent hours upon the bridge. Yet, without invitation nor further instruction from Snoke below, there is little to do but hold their position. The watchful eyes of his crew have become heavy, constant conscious weight upon his skin, and his shoulders. They are not accusing, no. But they begin to_ wonder _. And so he has retreated to his own chambers, to take his allotted rest hours. Though Hux suspects the general, again, has not slept more than a few snatched minutes here and there since the fall of Starkiller._

_It does not surprise him – especially when he himself cannot help but hear his own father’s voice, deep in memory but always so close to the surface. As a child, as an adolescent, as a man: so many times has Hux been told that he would amount to little, just another soldier lost amongst the swelling ranks. It seems the general had been told much the same. Oh, the general had risen high, of course – far higher than Hux himself, who had barely become a senator’s staffer, and even now does not know what that means for him. But it seems even this decorated general, shamed though he might now be, still hears the same voice. But then, when he looks into the mirror, they both see the commandant’s eyes staring back at them. There has never been any escape. And unless he one day goes blind, there never will be._

_He cannot sleep in his uniform, but it seems to Hux that the general is reluctant to strip away those layers. Hux cannot divine exactly why that is, but he suspects it is something to do with the dread of not being ready. Of the call at last coming from the planet below, and the general to be only in his basics, hardly ready for presentation to the creature who will pass the final judgement over his worth._

_But the general does strip himself bare, for he cannot bathe while trapped in the layers of his dress uniform. But the eyes that move over his naked body are far more critical than any other’s could ever hope to be. They have learned this skill from those most practised in such arts. And Hux knows it, for he has been taught by the same teacher. Supreme Leader Snoke, whoever or whatever he is, will never reach the same levels as those of Commandant Brendol Hux himself._

_But there’s an urgent strangeness in this, in looking at himself now in the narrow mirror of the ‘fresher. It’s a seeming luxury, though Hux knows it is there only to allow the general to make sure his appearance is configured to any and all regulations. Yet he had himself looked at his own body so recently, in so similar a fashion; the immediate comparison is disorientating, peculiar, almost demoralising._

_The general is not so dissimilar, save for his age. Looking now at that body, it seems that while he likely keeps to some schedule of physical exertion, it is hardly taxing; his muscles are lean and long, but hardly remarkable. His belly has a slight roundness, though his ribs are clearly visible. His weight is kept down through skipped meals, caf, and more than a few cigarras a day. Hux can feel a craving for one now, even though the general pushes furiously down on it, turning to the ‘fresher._

_The door chimes._

_He goes stock still, as prey before a predator. In the distance, there is the sound of the door sliding open, for all it had not been answered; the general immediately reaches out to the lock of the ‘fresher door, unactivated in his perceived privacy. It does not matter. This second door opens regardless. It reveals a hulking dark mass standing there, silent and watchful and utterly immutable._

_The general does not turn again from his own reflection, makes no move to cover himself for all some deep-seated shame begs him to do so. “What do you want?”_

_“You.”_

_He snorts, though Hux can feel the curl of arousal already beginning low in his gut; he’s disgusted with himself, with the general, and yet it does nothing to tamp it down. But it seems the general has not forgotten the last encounter with Kylo Ren, for all Hux had excused himself before that particular festivity had reached its height. He grasps at a robe, pulls it about his thin form, though even he is not slight enough to simply move around the other man._

_“Move.”_

_He does not. “Hux.”_

_And he turns on him in fury, eyes blazing, colour rising in burning flush. “I don’t have time for this, Ren!” he snaps, and his bare hands are coiling to fists, his knees locking as though he has any chance of taking Kylo Ren in a fair fight. “And neither do_ you _. You should be preparing yourself for your meeting with the Supreme Leader.”_

_He is unmasked, his face no longer the ruin it had been – but the knitting skin is shiny and bright, laddered already with the beginnings of scar tissue. “I don’t care about time,” he says, and the voice is rough as desert sand for all his eyes are wet and dark and so damned soft. “I don’t care about your schedules, or your plans.”_

_“Did you ever?” he sneers, and those broad shoulders move in careless negative._

_“No.”_

_He would turn away, but there is nowhere left to retreat. The general can only move forward, now. “Hardly a surprise,” he says, and Ren does not move. He is dark and constant, as unassailable as the core of a black hole._

_“None of that matters,” he says, and it is simple, almost easy for all it is the hardest thing for the general to hear. “It didn’t matter then. It doesn’t matter now.”_

_Turning his face away, he is confronted again by his reflection. Hux meets that gaze himself, bleak and bland, even as the general speaks. “I’m not in the mood for your fatalism, Ren.”_

_“So what are you in the mood for?”_

_This time, when he looks to the other man, his lips are pulled back from his teeth. “Do you want me to hurt you?”_

_“Do you want to hurt me?”_

_It’s a strangely honest question. Hux expects only the affirmative answer, and he does not want to stay and watch what will become of it. Already he tries to pull back, to rear away, to escape now as he had once before. The sensation pulls, tears, fraying at the edge of his mind like skin over sandpaper._

_And the general winces. “No,” he says, barely above a whisper._

_And Hux pauses._

_Ren only reaches forward. His dark eyes fill the world as he pushes at the shoulders of the robe; the general never did have time enough to tie the belt. It falls in miserable whisper to his feet, and Ren follows it down. There upon his knees, gloved hands pressed feather-light to the thinness of his thighs, he begins again._

_Hux tries to watch from a distance. It is not his body, and this is not his reality. But he is within this world, now, and it cannot be ignored. Ren’s lips are thick, and warm, and they know what they want; they coax arousal from the general even as he does not touch in return. Instead he braces himself only with one hand upon the lintel of the doorway, head bowed, hair falling into the blurring field of his vision._

_With everything that has happened, and everything that is still yet to come – it should not be so easy, to rise to this. But the gloved hands shift, again; the general hisses, to feel the press of a leather-bound fingertip just between his cheeks, just where it matters most. But Ren does not seek entrance. He simply worships from his knees, mouth and lips and low humming sound, one more song than words._

_And Hux can feel the dampness of the man’s eyes when he closes them, and lets release take him over the edge. He does not even watch as Ren drinks deep of him. But when he opens them again, his voice is even, that of a man who has known only the power of command._

_“What do you want, Ren?”_

_He sits back upon his booted heels, eyes so very dark. “I want you to fuck me.”_

_And he chuckles, raw and hurting, as though he’d been the one with a cock so recently down his throat. “I think you’ve rather shot yourself in the foot, there,” he says, one hand shifting over his groin. “I won’t be fucking_ anything _for a while.”_

_“It will take time,” he says, soft, strangely agreeable. “And we have time.”_

_“Do we?”_

_For all the bleakness of it, Ren only smiles – small, and very sad. “Snoke does not want us yet.” His hand, bare now, rests gentle upon his naked hip. “So we can have each other.”_

_It’s a mistake. And yet, for all that has passed between them: it is one the general is apparently willing to make. And it makes no_ sense _: for Hux to be here, to be behind his eyes, as the general lays back upon his bed. There they both watch as Kylo Ren strips naked before him, and Hux can only sigh at the reveal of every inch of skin, at every revealed scar and wound. But all the general’s cock does indeed give an interested twitch, it does not even consider rising again. Not yet._

_But soon._

_Now nude, Ren turns around, bends forward. Those muscular buttocks shift in teasing invitation, once answered by his own long, blunt fingers. So easily they work himself open, displaying his desire before the general. Between his thighs, his cock has become an aching, yearning thing; Hux can see that so often Ren comes close. And yet, he never crosses that event horizon. He never goes over. Instead he torments his own body for the pleasure of another, for all that the general could never be as cruel to him as Ren is to himself._

_In the end, it is the general who beckons Ren close. Willingly he lays down upon his stomach, hips tilted upward, face half-buried in the creases of the general’s pillow. When he slips in, Hux can feel that the general had wanted it to be hard. But Ren has made it too easy. And he cannot fuck the way he wants. Instead he slides in, out, and it is all slick soft whisper. And even when he lays his entire weight upon him, it does not matter. There is nothing much of him now. There never was._

_Ren comes first, though his cock remains untouched. Hux does not know how that is, if he had worked himself some friction against the coverlet, or if he takes his pleasure through the Force as well as his dick. But the pressure of it on the general’s cock, still buried in his ass, means he comes again: less than before, but hard enough._

_He withdraws with a sigh, and Ren turns over without permission; pulls him close, crushing and close._

_“I love you.” It is choked out against his skin. “I’ve always loved you. I’ll never love anyone the way I love_ you _.”_

_Even with the great body pressed against his own, broken and bleeding in spirit if not in physicality anymore, Hux manages to shift onto his back. There, he stares upward, and sees nothing but what had always been there before._

_“Well,” he says, thin and lifeless, “how fortunate for everybody else, then.”_

 

*****

 

Hux found it difficult to eat the breakfast provided for him. It tasted well enough; for all there were some oddities, he’d come to know something of basic Uyterian cuisine in his time with the senator’s office. Yet his appetite had long since vanished. At its conclusion, the droid assured him that a meeting had indeed been scheduled with the senator, in one hour hence. He spent it moving through the strange emptiness of the house, though he did not think he was alone there. Only – segregated. And had no idea how long that might last. Or why it had even been deemed necessary.

The droid had informed him that Gillen would come to him in the morning room. As the hour drew to its close he found his way there, and found, too, that it invoked unpleasant memory of the Organa residence in Coruscant. It had been a masterpiece of sprawling rooms, in a city that placed such a premium on space. Now it seemed more than passingly strange, for what he had learned of Organa’s character. But then, it had given her space enough to grant Kylo his training rooms. And the walls had been so lined with paintings of dead Alderaan, the shelves and corners filled with artefacts from no doubt the same place. It had been more a museum than a living household.

And he closed his eyes, now. He should not miss Kylo. In truth, they barely even _knew_ one another. The dream of the night before, given its nature, should not have fostered it further. It should only have reminded him of the futility of their connection. But he had meant it, when he had told Gillen that their parting had been sudden, had not been as it should. He owed Kylo so much more.

Opening his eyes, he looked to the region-locked datapad in his lap and felt again that vicious yearning to speak with him. It was futile given his own current situation, but in truth he didn’t even know for sure that Kylo himself had the ability to even receive his call. They clearly had the means – or at least Dameron had shown he did, in whichever village he had wandered off to. Presumably Skywalker could find access to the same if he required it. Even as he turned the datapad over in his hands again, faintly wondering at what workarounds might let him through the firewall, he realised for the first time that he did not even know the comm channel to try.

He supposed he could reach out to Organa’s office on Coruscant. Something about that felt increasingly unlikely, given the how it had been so securely locked against the outside world. But a world of work lay within its confines. Hux would have given much for it yesterday, upon the transport. But, today, seated upon a stiff couch, alone in this house – he looked instead to the view beyond the window, silent and still. An orchard marched down the brief incline, lines of trees like bars upon a cell; vertical and perfectly aligned, their spreading branches were not yet heavy with the bounty of coming harvest season.

“Bren.”

“Senator Gillen.” He rose without thinking, careful martial etiquette guiding his every movement. “I had thought you would call me to your quarters in the city.”

“Ah, well – my staff has not yet arrived from Coruscant, so there is not much going on there just yet. But you have your place there, have no fear.”

His brow creased, his skin prickling with sudden cool. “I’m not afraid.”

“And I’m glad for it.”

The smile she wore had a strange tilt – as if she’d said the wrong words. As though there something else, lurking beneath. But her lovely eyes shifted over him with the softness of lost memory, and Hux swallowed hard.

“I know this isn’t important, as these things go, but I forgot to ask it yesterday.”

“You’re wondering where your things are?” she said, light and breezy, and his own words only grew all the heavier.

“I – yes. I know we have business—”

A wave of one hand, an easy chuckle, and everything seemed as some jest upon a summer’s eve. “Oh, it’s all part of the business, Bren.” Though her expression tightened then, just a little, a mask pulled more completely over the face beneath. “But as I said, it’s in storage; I didn’t think you’d wish to stay here long, and I’d like to have you moved to your own house.”

Again he frowned. “So soon?”

“This is where you belong.” Her smile had faded so slowly, that Hux had not realised until now that it had completely vanished. “But there are…matters, that must be attended to first.”

“What matters?”

She had not taken a seat. Moving now to the doorway, she indicated the twists of the hallway beyond. “Come with me.”

No droid had accompanied her here, and she did not call one to her now. Gillen knew the house well, in a way that sat strangely in his own mind. The slow swish of her skirts called him forward all the same; in it, he could sense the faintest, vaguest memory of his mother. He remembered so vaguely those days in wet Arkanis: trailing her, following her, his little thin legs never quite able to keep up even when she had slowed for him. But there was something wrong with it. It felt somehow uncertain, hazy around the edges.

But he kept up easily with Nahani Gillen. “Where are we going?”

Before, it would have been question he never would have asked; he’d been taught well when to hold his tongue. And she only sighed, almost maternal in its resigned patience.

“We are almost there.” And then, almost reluctant: “It’s one of the back gardens.”

“ _Gardens_?”

“Yes,” she said, “it’s better to do these things outside.” A pause, and then, with the faintest hint of something like regret: “It’s better for the earth, really.”

Dread had been something he’d known in his life, and from a young age; he did not remember a time when he had not feared the return of his father from the distant Academy at which he taught. “I don’t understand,” he said, intending it to sound calm, collected. But when she glanced back, he knew she’d heard it as he had: the soft terror of a child being taken to his punishment.

“Give it time, Bren,” she said, soft, and in that moment he’d never hated the name more. But already they were moving outside; blinking against the light, he struggled to see anything. Visdic had already proven much cooler than Yavin 4, but the light seemed almost contradictory in how it burned so much _brighter_. It was a long moment before he could focus upon anything. And then—

“Brendol.”

But it was not Gillen’s voice, speaking his name. Horror reached up, seized his heart – but long practice had his spine straightened, his chin tilted high, his voice clear and calm as a cadet before his commander.

“Father.”

He rose from the chair in which he had sprawled, no longer dressed in the borrowed clothes of a fallen Imperial. This uniform instead was darker, cleaner in its lines, a starburst insignia upon one sleeve. _The Order_ , his mind whispered, and something in him laughed even as the Commandant scowled. “I did wonder if you’d come,” he said, accusingly and careless all at once. “It sounded as if you were rather… _enjoying_ …your sojourn on that old Rebel base.”

“Commandant.” Gillen’s words were tired, but the hint of clear warning cut through clean and clear. “It doesn’t matter now. We have what we needed from his time there.”

Those watery eyes, so exactly the colour of his own, did not move from Hux’s face. “But did he get what he _wanted_?” he asked, mocking, easy. And she snorted.

“It doesn’t matter.” Her voice had become stronger, now, more the tone of a Senator about her vocation. “We’re here for a reason, yes?”

“And this is my show.”

Her peevish tone impressed her not once iota. “So get on with it, then.”

For the first time he glanced to her, one eyebrow arched, lips curled back from his teeth. “Are you sure you wish to watch?” he asked, and for all it came mild, Hux knew all too well the malice beneath. “I would think it not…fit for the delicate sensibilities of a senator.”

“I may not be a soldier, Commandant,” she said, even and eternal. “But I know my duty.”

“Very well.” And he turned, voice cracked like a whip. “Brendol!” he snapped, and pointed to the space just before his expansive belly. “Come here.”

Perhaps he really was nothing more than the coward his father had named him, as a child. The entire time they had spoken, he had been frozen to stillness; now, he was fallen to attention, a muscle memory long ago beaten into his flesh. But even as he came before his father, a droid stepped forward from the shadows. It was no innocuous household droid now, not with the cuffed figure stumbling before its every long-legged step. With its head down, hair matted and dark with dirt, Hux could make no easy identification, even though it hesitated at his name. One mechanical hand, shoved between the shoulderblades, sent him first forward, and then to his knees.

Then he looked up, and Hux felt his world go grey around the edges.

Chadri Dio looked back up at him.

The push of cold metal against his hand came as no real surprise. His hand closed reflexively about its grip, the movement familiar and near-comforting for all he had not touched one in years. He’d been honed into the shape of an expert marksman, and it was a skill not so easily forgotten – especially not when he’d taken to it so well, and so quick. And even though he’d never participated in such initiation, his quicker mind knew all too well what this meant.

“You know how it was in the Academy at Arkanis, Brendol,” his father said, his voice rich with the low pulse of disdain so intrinsic to his childhood. “Don’t you remember the Commandant’s Cadets?”

The cold he felt now _did_ in fact remind him of those days. Of when he’d been nothing more than a very small child, shivering in the rain and the wind: punishment for some infraction he could not now recall. With his eyes fixed upon the helpless figure before him, Hux knew again the ruin of his upbringing. “I was _six years old_ when we left Arkanis,” he said, hoarse, the truth as bitter as any lie. “And besides, this isn’t the same.”

One pale eyebrow rose in disdainful arch. “Oh?”

“That was a _game_.” Even as his palms sweated, he hardened his fingers to stiff fist. “And part of the game was to make appear as though some misfortune had befallen the victim.” He might have laughed, had his fury not left his voice low and hard and unbroken. “I hardly see how shooting an armed and bound man in the back of the head could possibly look like an accident!”

“You let us worry about that,” he said; with the droid still hovering silently at his side, it should have been meant as reassurance. But father had always been a deft hand with such cutting scorn. “And it’s not a game, boy. This is a _test_.” His lips twisted beneath the oddly neat trim of his beard, so much grey now clustered around the red. “Or do you _want_ to fail?”

And Hux did laugh now, hard and harsh. “In your eyes, I always failed, no matter the final score.” And he turned away, even as he knew he had no-where left to go. “I won’t do it.”

His father sounded both incredulous, and satisfied; the commandant had always expected him to fail. But Hux had to wonder if even he had thought he would do so like this. “But isn’t this what you wanted?” he asked, almost gloating. “I remember a boy who wanted only to be like those his father valued—”

“I’m not that boy anymore,” he said, cold, hard. “And yes, I want Chadri Dio dead. I won’t deny that.” And he looked down, met those wild, wide, hopeless eyes, and grimaced. “But not like this.”

The commandant idly kicked one foot out; Dio grunted around his gag, and fell to stillness only at the second – harder – strike. “Then how would you _rather_ have it?”

He set his jaw, the sardonic tone no surprise to one who had grown up with the man standing shadow over his entire life. “Are you saying that you’ll arrange a murder to my satisfaction, if I’ll just kill the man myself?”

And Gillen’s voice broke in, sudden strange distress. “Brendol, _please_.”

He did not look to her, or to Dio – only, indeed, to his father before him. “The Republic would not allow this,” he said, and she sighed; he knew without looking that she shook her head.

“Ah, well.” Now when he looked over, he saw she had folded her arms across her chest, elbows cradled in her palms. “We’re not quite so entrenched in the ways of the New Republic, here on Uyter.”

He swallowed hard, wondered if his blindness had been wilful, or if he’d just been a fool. “Has Uyter ever been part of the New Republic?”

“In some ways, yes,” she said, almost in apology. “But in many ways, no. Not at all.”

“Senator.” And though it was not quite command, his father did not keep his impatience from his words. “We haven’t got time to coddle the boy.”

“Commandant. The _boy_ is fundamental.” One hand reached out now, closed about the blaster’s barrel. Even as he hissed a sudden breath, she yanked it from his hand, tossed it to the droid. “Bren, come with me. We’ll leave this to your father.”

She had not even looked to see that it caught the damned thing, though Hux saw the droid snatch it from the air. In the silence that followed, he felt something like relief, even as his stomach twisted at the thought of having been little else but a disappointment yet again.

But he sensed nothing of that from her, even as she strode through the gardens, back into the house. They were deep into the maze when he spoke, at last.

“I’ve failed you.”

She shook her head, kept moving. “I didn’t expect this of you,” she said, plain, simple. “This was something _he_ wanted.”

“But you’re part of this,” he said, and did not bother to mask the accusation. “You’re part of the Order.”

“And so are you.” She turned now, and though the motion was sharp, the words were kindly given. “Bren. You _know_ the New Republic will never last. It was built on the foundation of terrorism, by people who know only how to break things down, not to build them up.”

“But—”

The finger, pressed upon his lips, was very gentle. “In some ways, you never should have left the Order, and not so young.” And then she nodded, more to herself than to himself. “But I feel it was good for you. You _know_ the Republic.” Her voice only gained more strength with every word, flowing and firm. “You understand why it must end.”

“Senator—”

“You can call me Nahani.” They had arrived at some junction; she turned from him, eyes bright in the ambient lighting of the dim corridors. “I will leave you, for a little while. It’s a lot to take in, I know it.” And she leaned close, these words all but whispered in his ear. “But I also know that you will make the right decision, given time enough.”

The droid that appeared at his side was not the one from the garden: just a service droid, with no martial capabilities. As it accompanied him back to his rooms, Hux felt some faint hint of menace, all the same.

Out on the balcony, in the fresh cool air of approaching autumn, Hux now knew nothing but the sudden, harsh yearning for the view from the temple. There was no endless summer here: no heat on his skin, no dampness of sweat and humid air. Only the light cool caress of wind, and stony Visdic laid out before him.

Hux stared, and saw nothing. He had known stillness, before, but not like this. Already he felt himself falling to something like meditation, though it had never been a practice he’d considered before. Kylo had shown him the katas, had even tried to push the Force through him, but even then he had not known the appeal of it. He’d not been sure why it mattered. But then: perhaps he had. When a panic attack had taken him, he’d sought always to centre himself, to try to bring some balance to a world gone black and white, and cruel with it.

_Hux?_

He turned, startled. But no-one was there. He was alone. And, very slow, he closed his eyes again.

_Rey?_

In the pause that followed, he felt a fool – jumping at shadows, imagining a companion when utterly alone. But then, why should he not have picked Kylo himself, instead of his small cousin—

_Are you still there?_ It was fainter, now, fading like a voice walking down a distant hallway. But then, it came again. _I don’t know where I am_ , she said, very sad. And he paused for a long moment himself, then spoke. There was nothing to lose, when there was nothing here in the first place.

_I don’t know where I am, either_.

And then: nothing. No more. It had only been his imagination after all. With his head now aching, Hux returned to the sitting room, again took up his datapad. It still granted him no access to the outside. But it held much information about Uyter, and the plans that he himself had been privy to before now. Oh, there had been nothing overt, not in any of it. They were no fools. But he had been. None of this had ever been a plan for the changing seat of the Senate.

They had been building a place for the Order to first call home.

He had spent so long in Coruscant a stranger. When he now looked to this blue sky, bare of any stars, Hux felt no homecoming here, either.

 

*****

 

She came back to him as dusk drew over the sky like a light curtain of gauze and mist. Seated before him, with hands folded upon the table from which his uneaten meal had long since been cleared, her eyes fixed upon him. The datapad remained there too, switched off now. He’d taken no notes, made no conclusions. And the words slipped from his lips before he’d even thought he would say them.

“I want to return to Yavin 4.”

Her sigh was as soft and easy as the wind through wheat. “You can’t go back, Bren,” she said, and shook her head though her eyes never once left his own. “They’ll know you for what you are.” And her words were as gentle as they were relentless, like the waters of a placid lake dragging him down to drown. “You are a child of the Empire. You don’t belong there. They are not your people.”

His own eyes fixed upon the datapad, found its screen blank and mocking. “I wasn’t given a choice.”

“But they’ll think that you had one. To them, there’s _always_ a choice.” When he looked up, he found she had leaned back in her chair, lips pursed and eyes so very sad. “And do you really think they’ll have time for you, when we show them what you did to Chadri Dio?”

He could not mourn that which he’d so often wished dead. But he could regret the circumstances. “Where is he?”

“He’s gone.” A shadow slipped over her face, as swift and sudden as a temporary eclipse. Her smiles were long gone, now. “And your father may not agree, but it’s not important that you didn’t kill him yourself.” Now her hands rose, white and free of all rings; she folded them before her chin, pale eyes locked upon his own. “Because you did still kill him, you realise?”

“How?”

Even as he swallowed around his own dry throat, she spoke quick and easy, with the easy cadence of one long-used to speaking before a restless crowd. “Because he interfered with you,” she said, as if it could ever be so simple. “And you hold far more importance in this galaxy than he ever could.” Now she leaned back, again, one leg crossing over the other beneath the long skirts of her gown. “But then you’ve always known that. Haven’t you?”

Still the datapad remained blank, when he looked down; his stomach squirmed, his skin crawling with heat even though he knew he would appear pale as death. “Why did my father defect to the New Republic?” he asked, though his lip curled when he forced his glance upwards again. “Although I suppose it’s obvious it was a ruse. But what meaning did it have? To what purpose did he do it?”

“Because of you.”

Some part of him sang, at that – the part that had noted the rank-markings upon a general’s sleeve, and had felt nothing but satisfied at the inevitable truth of them. “Why _me_?” Already he could hear his voice spiralling upwards, but could not drag it back. “I haven’t done anything of note. I rose to a senator’s staffer, and _nothing more_!”

“Is that really all you’ve done?”

In the quiet, beneath her watchful gaze, he closed his eyes. His throat had tightened, as if closed off by some unseen hand. “This is about Kylo,” he whispered, and opened his eyes. “This is about _Snoke_.”

Regal though she seemed, he still saw the faint shiver as it passed along the entire length of her body. “It is.”

The general’s memories were not his own; for all the man had taught him of the creature’s very existence, Hux himself knew nothing of his appearance, his history. But he still had felt for himself the dread that had settled into the general’s bones when he knew he had failed him. “So Snoke is the true leader behind the Order?” he asked, for all it was but the most rhetorical of questions; the answer could be but the bitterest of known quantities. “Who _is_ he?” he asked instead. “And why does he want Kylo?”

“It’s not so much about _Kylo_.”

“It’s the power inside him,” Hux replied, too quick; these were someone else’s words, the agony of someone else’s memory. “He tried to take it once, but failed.”

A light shrug barely shifted her shoulders. “I really do understand little about such matters. The Force speaks not to me.” And her own bitterness came through faint, but true enough. “We have that in common, I suppose.”

It never would have stung, before. Somehow it did, now. “So Snoke wants what Kylo has.”

Something odd shifted in her expression, something unsaid but spoken all the same. “He has his uses to him, yes.”

“And what about his uses to _me_?”

A laugh escaped her then, throaty and startled. “Oh, _Bren_ ,” she said, and straightened, leaned forward. “That’s what it’s _always_ been about.”

“I don’t understand.”

Sharp and short though the words were, she seemed hardly affected. “It doesn’t matter.”

It did, but then he supposed that in her mind, it truly might not. The pieces upon the board so very rarely understand the minds of those that moved them. “But then,” he said instead, slow, careful “what I _really_ don’t understand,” and he paused, just moment, “is how you came to be here in the first place.”

She blinked, just once. “Your mother.”

And he frowned. “Maratelle?”

“No, your true mother.” Again she reclined, though her features shone with sudden pity. “Maratelle was your stepmother.”

He might as well have been carved from fresh ice. “What?”

“They never told you, of course,” Gillen said, and he could have strangled her for the pity in her words. “Maratelle couldn’t have children of her own – but with that said, it wasn’t as if you were _planned_.” There was scorn, there, but Hux could scarcely recognise it before Gillen went on. “But when you _did_ happen, Brendol decided he’d keep you – raise you as his own with Maratelle assumed to be the mother. Given her history, it wasn’t as if they couldn’t explain why she retired from the social scene for the duration of her pregnancy. She was so very desperate to carry this imaginary child to term, after all.”

When he closed his eyes, he knew it again: the soft scent of spice, the salt of a distant ocean. He had been only four years old when his mother – when _Maratelle_ – had died. “But I’m not imaginary,” he whispered, and felt rather than saw her smile.

“Not at all.” Her hand rested gentle over his own. “I’m your mother’s sister.”

He should have pulled it back. He did not. “Where is she?”

“Joni is dead.” When his eyes popped open, he saw such naked grief upon her features that he could not disbelieve it, even as cynicism warned him otherwise. “She died not long after your birth. All the best care Brendol could bring to muster, and it wasn’t enough.” And her lips twisted, eyes as sudden as dark as the sky coiling up the vortex of its chosen storm. “I was very angry with him, when I found out.” She removed her own hand then, closing both together in white-knuckled stillness. “But I was angrier at her, for putting herself in that position.”

“But what was she doing on Arkanis?” he asked, and he could not mask his bewilderment. “Because if you’re sisters, she was Uyterian—”

“She had fallen in with the Rebellion. She was acting as a spy.” The words came flat, hard. “But then, Joni was always a dreamer.”

He could only stare, the deep ache in his gut as if someone had driven a burning blade right through his body.

“I knew she had been in deep cover – and her body was returned to us, with no real indication of what had happened to her.” Here she snorted, harsh and jagged. “Aside from the clear fact she’d had a child, of course. And this was when the civil war had first truly begun, with the firing and then the destruction of the Death Star. We’d known where she was. But we had no idea they would have any _success_.” One hand rose, cut through the air like the swing of a blade. “But I didn’t care about _that_. I just wanted to know what had happened to my sister.”

“I’m assuming you found out.”

A thin smile – one he knew all too well, given he’d seen it himself in the mirror. “I never warmed to Brendol. But you are blood of my blood, and I had no intention of leaving you in his hands.” But before he could even think of scoffing, she raised one hand, words quick and steady. “Of course, there was only so much I could do – and when the Empire abandoned Arkanis, he took you with him. The Empire so needs its children, after all.”

“And you were so willing to give over a child not even your own to a cause your world didn’t even believe in.”

For the first time, he heard the anger in her voice directed at him. “There’s no need to pretend at denseness,” she said, and he flinched; she was a skilled speaker in the Senate, and not used to being ignored. “Uyter always garnered many contracts from the Empire, and though our government leaned towards decentralisation in the early days, it became readily apparent that the New Republic was inward facing – in a way that was worse than the Empire, perhaps, because they were so certain they were _not_. Only the Core and the Inner Rim received any real attention in those early days; the rest of us were left to rot. Or look elsewhere for the assistance we required.”

“And you could tell them where to look.”

A shrug of slim shoulders, the easy conscience of one convinced of their righteousness. “I maintained contact with Brendol, even when he retreated to the Unknown Regions, yes. I share dear stupid Maratelle’s affliction, of course; there will never be children for me. And Joni’s offspring will always be the closest I will have.”

“Because of course the academy commandant famous for _pitting his own students against one another in murder games_ is the best person to have raising the only child you’ll ever have!”

He hadn’t realised he had shouted. He didn’t even known he’d rocketed to his feet, palms braced upon the table and lips drawn back from his teeth like a rabid beast. And she stood, too, glided to his side like a bitch come to calm her pup. “Oh, Bren.” Her hand threaded through his bright hair; so at odds with the pale sunlight of her own. Without regret he yanked himself away, and she withdrew. But still she smiled. And he wondered what Joni had looked like, even as she shook her head. “Brendol was always meant to bring you back to me. In time. At the _right_ time. You of all people ought to understand the virtue of patience.”

A dreadful knot had taken shape now, low in his stomach – dozens of disparate threads coming together in a choking noose. “You _gave_ me my job,” he said, dull, the words almost dirty against his tongue. “I didn’t earn it. I got it through nepotism. Because I am your nephew and you needed me in a position beneficial to whatever _this_ is.”

But she was shaking her head, lips pressed to a sudden straight line. “Don’t sell yourself so low, Bren. You’ve always been perfectly capable of the tasks I’ve assigned you. If there’s one thing Brendol taught you well, it’s to follow orders.”

His own lips had turned numb. “How wonderful of him.”

A short laugh, sharp and musical, and she took her seat again. “I am very glad you are here,” she confided. “After the war, and the assigned defection, Brendol lost interest in you – even though your return was always planned, he knew that ten years away from the ranks would cripple your military advancement in a fashion most permanent. He always wanted you to reach general, did you know?”

This time when he closed his eyes, it was a motion both tight and brief. Behind his eyelids he found emblazoned the memory of a man older than him, with his own face, haggard and pale in the starship’s harsh ‘fresher light – and the stripes of office, like a manacle about one thin strong wrist.

“I’m surprised he believed me capable of such,” he said, even and hard. Again Gillen rolled her eyes, that same quick chuckle bridging the space between them.

“Even if you weren’t capable – and I assure you that you are, Brendol Hux Jr. – you would have made general. He would have done everything in his power to get you there.”

For the first time, Hux understood why Kylo had taken that name. Why someone would turn from their family, even one so great and so influential, if only there were something of themselves to have instead, unfettered and unmarred by everything that had come before.

“And if I decline to be part of this?” he asked, though he sensed no anger from her now.

“You have no choice in the matter, as it were.”

“But I do.”

“But you _don’t_.” Now her tone edged towards irritation, bright exposed blade. “You are a child of the lost Empire, Brendol. This is where you are supposed to be.” And she paused, so clever with her words; he wondered when this target had been created. “And you can call Kylo Organa-Solo here, too. So he, too, can be where he belongs.”

But she spoke as someone who had not known Kylo’s terror – who had not borne the weight of him in his arms, when Kylo had turned in horror from the creature who even now still sought him out. Hux could not feel himself the Force. But somehow he’d _known_ the strength of it, there on that little moon, beneath that great big sky.

When he spoke, it was through lips both numb and cold. “I won’t do it.”

A smile, mournful and gentle, crossed her features; she had always been so very lovely. “Oh, but you already have.” And she almost chuckled, for all it sounded as though she might have some tears in her yet. “He’d do anything for you. Didn’t you know?”

He went very still. “What have you done?” he whispered. And she only nodded, eyes very wide, and very blue.

“He’s a Skywalker. He’ll do whatever is necessary.” This time, when her hand lay over his, he could not hide the tremor of his own. “There is a life for you here, Bren. And you always knew that your life in Coruscant was not your own.”

He licked his lips, found them as dry as his throat. “Get out.”

A faint smile prickled her lips, and she did not move. “I can leave, yes,” she said, very gentle. “But you can’t. You know that, don’t you?”

“Get _out_.”

But even when she did leave, he felt her still. She was in his blood, he supposed. The same way his father was. The same way the _Empire_ was. And even though he wore these borrowed clothes of grey and blue, he wondered how he would look in white.

And then he covered his face, felt a scream rising in his throat. He swallowed in back, let it burn in the excess of acid roiling in his stomach. There would be something that could be done. He could find a way out of this.

But he couldn’t know if he would be strong enough to be the one to take it.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...well, THIS was unexpected...
> 
> Apparently I got it into my head that I want to _finish_ this thing, and so...well. An update already, a week later. And in Hux's world that's not really for the best, considering things can only get worse (and more complicated) at this point.
> 
> If you're still here reading along: thank you so much. The fact this appeared so quick is because it's kind of turned into a weird therapy for me, so I'm going to use that as my excuse for it being so wildly out of control. Oops.
> 
> ALSO, I can't believe I did this, but I forgot last chapter to link a gift @ottenebrare gave me for my birthday in February; it's [this gorgeous gif of Hux and his Shadow](https://ottenebrare.tumblr.com/post/158031638829/wishing-a-happy-belated-birthday-to-the), and it's just...honestly. Her art and her support has been such a _massive_ part of this story, I can't even begin to explain it. And that particular picture captures a _lot_ of what the over-arching story is really aiming at.
> 
> And while getting that link, I noticed she'd linked to to other things I'd been having trouble relocating (my tag system on tumblr is useless; the googles do NOTHING!!!). One is [a cover to the fic ](https://ottenebrare.tumblr.com/post/145182192848/saltandlimes-kyhlos-claricechiarasorcha)done by the amazing @firstordershitposting, and...yes. YES. So much true, right there.
> 
> The other was done by @xanthippe-in-the-snow, and it's [an amazing Hux doll](https://ottenebrare.tumblr.com/post/144246227958/xanthippe-in-the-snow-hux-as-an-imperial-grand#notes) who is...actually rather relevant to this chapter. You'll see.
> 
> So, in the meantime...I hope it works. Thank you for coming back. And I think we'll get to the end of this after all. <3

He woke up, though he did not remember having fallen – or having _been_ – asleep. But there had also been no dreams of the general, nor of his knight. Hux could not call the emotion with accompanied that thought _regret_ , exactly, but – still, he wondered. Had they been put to death, the pair of them, in that other galaxy, far, far away? Or did their fate as yet hang in the balance, uncertain and teetering, the way his own seemed to now?

But they, at least, had one another. For all the violence and ragged harsh edges of their relationship, they were at least _together_. Hux himself had no idea if Kylo had even shared the last dream he’d had the night he had arrived in Visdic. Closing his eyes, Hux found himself hoping fiercely that he had. He didn’t even know why. It wasn’t as if he could be certain that he himself felt actual _love_ for the idiot back on Yavin 4.

But he rather thought Kylo himself might have taken some comfort in it, somehow. Even if only for the sex Hux himself had never been able to give him.

Pushing himself up, he turned with immediate reflex to pull the covers to order, smoothing the quilt over military-neat corners. There was no way of knowing what the day would bring. He didn’t even know if Gillen would attempt to speak with him, though he had no illusions that they would allow him to sulk in his room.

Opening the curtains told him only that dawn had recently broken over the edge of the horizon. It made his lips curl in the faint sour semblance of a smile; his body always fell quick into line with the biorhythms of a world. That was the lasting legacy of having been raised upon starships with marked delineations of day and night, and with the harsher expectation that all aboard not waste a moment of the time allocated them.

He had made it all the way into the ‘fresher when he had the distinct, numb realisation that his father would likely wish to have some dealings with him. In turn, all Hux wanted was that blaster back in his hand, finger tight about the trigger. It would be the greatest of pleasures, to press a cold barrel to that still head, with its greying shock of hair above the pale shockflesh of the face beneath. His eyes would widen, mouth opening on a roar—

Closing his eyes, his forehead thunked against the cool side of the ‘fresher stall. The memory of Chadri Dio was a bitter one, for all Hux felt no particular grief at the man’s passing. He did not even suffer from any sense of loss that he had not been the one to induce it. It was simply: a hollow place, carved out of the tangle of his troubled thoughts. It had been another test somehow failed, even as he had been given a passing grade and pushed right back to the head of the class.

_But how much of this life is something I have not earned, do not deserve?_

Only when properly and completely attired did he take the datapad in hand. But even as it finished booting, he only shut it back down again. The panel beside the door allowed him to summon the household droid; it appeared within moments, the same one which had brought him into the house. It was not the same one who had brought Chadri Dio to his execution. Hux looked up at the bland features, found them as expressionless as the human soldiers who had been born to the Empire, and then to her heir the Order.

“Do you have military capabilities?”

The sharp question made no impression upon its electronics. “I am programmed and outfitted for my purpose.”

“And if your purpose is to act as a soldier?”

Again, it answered only as expected. “I do as I am told.”

“Don’t we all,” Hux replied, the sharp acrimony of the words quite wasted on such a construct. “I want to talk to the Senator. To Nahani Gillen.”

“I will inform her of your request.”

It did not exactly block the door, though Hux supposed it was not as if he actually moved to walk around it. “Am I still permitted to go out into the city?”

“You may go where you wish.”

“Except to the starport, I would assume?” Again it only stared with impassive patience, as if he were a slow child struggling with basic arithmetic. With a snort of half-hearted disgust, he waved the damned thing away. “You’re dismissed.”

Despite the fact he couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten, there was no hunger in him now. Instead he went to the closet, frowned over the selection with. The heavy gaberwool coat would probably be too much, considering the mild temperatures he had already experienced. But when he moved out into the cobbled streets, the morning air did prove oddly cool. Tightening it further about his too-thin form, Hux kept his eyes up and challenging. Few people looked his way – though there were a surprising number of people moving about. Early in the morning though it might be, it seemed even in a city like Visdic they remained an agricultural people, their circadian rhythms matched to the patterns of light and dark.

As he drew closer to what he assumed was a market, the air sharpened with scents of what he could only identify as baking bread. A rich and homely smell, it stirred his stomach, though he’d never had much of an appetite for food as pleasure. Being raised in a military junta aboard starships for the formative years of his youth had done that for him. It was not as if he had any currency on him, either. But the datapad, secured in an interior pocket of the coat, gave him pause. Clicking through the basic menus, Hux saw he had access to credit chips via simple holo-transfer. Staring at the balance only left him wondering exactly what they paid him for, considering he hadn’t even done the one thing they’d asked of him.

_But that was your father. Gillen…_

Even knowing that, Hux still no real idea of what she truly wanted him to do – besides reel in Ben Organa Solo. While he could certainly work for her in a similar capacity to what he had before, he doubted whether or not she saw real value in his work.

Cynicism had always come so easy, to him – even here, standing on an alien street before a transparisteel window. Behind it, arrayed upon faceless mannequins, was what apparently passed for fashion on Uyter. It was similar, he noted with bitterness, to the clothing he himself wore: finely tailored, demure and simple. It had all no doubt been woven with fibres from the flora and fauna of this world, dyed in its own colours, sewn by its own hands.

Behind it all, his reflection, pale-faced as a spectre, stared wordlessly back.

A vibration in his pocket had him frowning, looking away. The datapad, taken from its pocket in the gaberwool coat, displayed only one incoming message. _I can see you this evening_ , it announced in bland, calm Aurebesh. _Take your time to read, again, what materials have been given you. I trust you will understand the import of the work you will undertake with us_.

Hux read it back once, then twice. The third time, he simply stopped halfway through the first sentence, thrusting it back into his pocket. Looking up, he met only his reflection, again. The coat was a different cut to that worn by the general; it held no ranking bars upon its sleeves. It still lay heavy upon his shoulders as he turned, and walked deeper into the burgeoning crowd.

 

*****

 

This was not a dream. Or at least, it was not a dream as he had known them to be in recent days: he had no sense of another body, of another’s mind. It was only this idea of _otherness_. That he was _outside_. That he was—

“You’re not dreaming.”

A grave little voice, rising from his side – recognition hit him like a blow to the solar plexus, forcing him to turn, seeking her out with the fumbling desperation of a blind man reaching for the sun.

“Rey?”

“Yep.” And she kicked a stone with one small foot, gave him a look somewhere between glum and sheepish. “Guess this is kinda weird, huh.”

None of that was as peculiar as the sudden realisation that there _was_ a stone for her to kick in the first place. But even though he looked down, he had no real _sense_ of the ground at all. He knew it must be there. It was supporting him. But he still could not _see_ it, even though his eyes were wide open.

He looked up. And then he looked around. Something like a headache had begun a rapid thumping behind his eyes, one not improved no matter how hard he strained to focus. But the environment around him never once resolved itself into anything readily identifiable; like a slideshow on a holoscreen, his surroundings seemed mere images: moving past in rapid flicker, always being replaced. Every time he blinked it changed again – and always to something new, even though he could tell just what the old had even been.

“You can settle on one thing, if you want.” Rey gave a little shrug, almost half-hearted; for her own part, she appeared mostly disinterested in their surroundings, her eyes fixed upon Hux alone. “I think it’s all just confused because there’s two of us here now.”

“ _Here_.” He repeated the word, found it alien and strange upon his tongue. “Where _are_ we, Rey?”

Another shrug, though this one seemed less helpless than the last. “I don’t really _know_ ,” she said, oddly pragmatic for an eight-year-old child, “but it’s…somewhere in the Force. I guess.” Now she blinked up at him, a small line pulling down the centre of her brow. “I mean, you’re not connected to the Force. Not really. But somehow you _are_ …and I guess I just pulled you in here with me?” Then she shook her head, appeared to answer her own question. “Because I wanted it badly enough. Maybe.”

“Is it because of Kylo?” He found that a particularly unpleasant thought, for all they’d done nothing physical enough to warrant infection. Not that he exactly believed the Force could be _transmitted_ in such a manner. Though it did make him wonder, if perhaps the carrying of _two_ children of Anakin Skywalker’s particularly potent blood had had something to do with the peculiar death of Padmé Amidala.

“Did he…did Kylo _do_ something to me?”

“Benny? Nah.” But she had turned pensive, the expression far too aged to sit well with the youth of her features. “I’m not really sure, I can’t really tell, but…” Squinting up at him, her words managed to be both grave and patently ridiculous. “Something’s gone really wrong.”

A snort was all he allowed himself. Anything else, and it would have dissolved into hysterical laughter. He sat down, instead, and too heavily at that; his stomach twisted when he looked down, saw nothing but stars beneath his ass. He looked up at her instead: solid, real, her dark hair caught up in that outlandish hairstyle, eyes wide and trusting. And she waited, for him.

“A lot of things have gone wrong,” he said, at last. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

“I don’t think you started it,” she said, again far too matter-of-fact in her assessment for the comfort of adults like himself. Not to mention she moved too easily when she joined him, sitting down at his side as if it did not matter that they could not see the ground. “And that’s important, you know. It’s not everything. But it’s _important_.”

Again, for a long moment, he could do nothing but _look_ at her: another scion of the Skywalker line, so utterly at ease with the uncanny and fantastic life she’d been doomed to live. But certainly _she_ could not be held responsible for those disasters and great upheavals that had come before her own strange birth. All the same, Hux thought of Chadri Dio, and grimaced. His hands, opened wide now, lay still upon his thighs. The palms and fingers were clear and clean. He knew the truth all the same.

Closing them to fist, he looked up to her again.

“Is this real?”

She frowned. “In what way?”

“Am I actually talking to you?”

A shadow danced across those gamin features, mockery in its every light step. “Yes.”

“But how?” Anything remotely approaching patience had managed to evaporate almost completely, for all he kept some control of his voice. “It’s not possible!”

“Well, it _shouldn’t_ be,” she replied, sounding so very sensible that he might have cried out his frustration, had he been raised a different person. “I’m not trained enough to do things like this, not really.”

“So how are you doing it now?” he asked. Chances were, he didn’t really want the answer. But then, he’d never really known how to curb his curiosity, when it came to the way things worked.

_Even if you can continue always to be so blind as to their true purpose_.

Rey appeared to actually consider this rather deeply, eyes turned to her own hands; they also had balled up, but together, a twisted knot upon her bent knees. When at last she spoke, she looked to him with something trepidation.

“Because I really, really want to?” she asked, and it almost sounded hopeful; for his own part, he couldn’t keep the blank scepticism from his own words.

“Just to talk to me?”

This time she had moved onto something like pity, then something like amusement; like the environment around them, she was an ever-changing tempest of colour and light. “Well, you _are_ the closest person. To me, I mean.”

“What?” The implication burned through him like a comet; the heat of its passage through space, the freezing cold of its ice-rock heart. “Rey—”

“They took me.” She said it with utter practicality, as if it could never have been any other way. “The same people who took you,” she then added, and the distinction actually made him laugh. And it _hurt_ , deep down in a chest that felt tight enough to burst with it.

“They didn’t take me,” he said, and his face hurt; it took a long moment for him to realise it was because he was smiling. “I came of my own free will.”

He expected fear. She just shook her head. “I don’t think you did.”

“It doesn’t matter if I did or I didn’t,” he said, much harsher than he should have. She still only watched, almost curious, and now he felt as though the invisible ground had really dropped out from beneath him. “But – they _kidnapped_ you?” he asked, and when she nodded, found he had no words save one. “Rey…”

She let it hang, for a long moment. Then she shifted her slight weight, smoothed her trousers over her folded legs. “You’re thinking about Snoke,” Rey observed, and it was as if she’d forced lightning through his bones.

“How do you know who he is?” he snapped out, but again she only shrugged.

“I don’t. Not really.” Now she stood, eyes turned to the distance. Biting her lip, now, she frowned around her teeth. “But…I can _hear_ things. Sort of.” Even as he turned his gaze in the same direction, felt only roiling nausea at the attempt, she looked back to him, drew his gaze back to herself. “And there are other things, too.”

“Like what?”

He’d almost been afraid to ask. With a sigh, and a raised hand, Rey waved it away like she was swatting flies. “It’s hard to explain. Like…I can’t _read_ minds. Not like they’re a book, or something. But I can kind of… _feel_ what people are thinking.”

The thought of how terrible that must be was a potent one. And Hux supposed that it would go some way towards explaining Kylo Organa. “And this?” he asked, though this time he couldn’t bear to look around them.

She in turn pursed her lips together, and then sat down at his side again. Drawing her knees up, setting her chin upon them, she frowned into that same distance. For the first time he really took in the fact that she dressed as she had been the last he’d seen her, back on Yavin 4 – and that he was much the same.

“This place…I don’t know,” she began, and stopped; when she started again, her frustration was clearly evident. “Benny never really explained it to me, when I talked to him about it. But I don’t think he’s ever really _been_ here. And Aunt Leia, she _knows_ the Force, but…she doesn’t _give_ herself to it.” Apology shone in those dark eyes now. “Does that make sense?”

It didn’t. “I think so.”

“Yeah, well.” Now she looked away again; he could feel something close to embarrassment creeping in. “I could never really ask Master Luke, because I never really saw him, but…”

“You know he’s your father,” he said, perhaps too flat. But she looked almost glad, which only made him feel all the worse.

“Yeah. I know.” And now her voice turned tentative, like a child tip-toeing down the corridor in the smallest hours of morning. “You found out about your mother, too.”

“ _Maratelle_ was my mother.” He didn’t quite snarl it, but her flinch said enough; he still couldn’t hold back the bitterness when he added, “Well, as much as a mother as my father would let her be.”

When she turned her face in profile, he realised for the first time how lovely a woman she would likely become. “You loved her.”

“I suppose.” His hands twitched; when he glanced down, he found them knotted in his lap, white-knuckled and still. “We’ve been lied to, a lot,” he muttered. “You and me.”

“I think everyone gets lied to.”

“Rey.” He didn’t even quite know what he was trying to say, anymore. And then, it came, unbidden and uninvited. “I think you’re in danger.”

Her laughter rose and fell like the trilling of temple bells. “Hux!” she cried, as if this were but a game. “I _know_ I’m in danger!”

What came next were words he had never thought he’d have reason to say. “Can I help you?” Something in him said this was the time where a better person would reach out, would take those small hands in his bigger ones, and hold them tight. He kept them to himself. “Is that why you’re here?”

And she smiled, like she knew. “No, not really.” Now that smile faded, her face again with a pensive tilt it never should have suffered. “I don’t think you can help me.”

It shouldn’t have hurt. Still, his face turned away, as if from a physical blow. And a small hand rested on his arm; he flinched more from that than the imagined blow. Her fingers curled tighter. “Don’t be sad about it. I still like you.”

“I have no idea why,” he muttered, and though it shouldn’t have been possible, she felt to now be gripping hard enough to bruise.

“Is it because you’re a child of the Empire?” He hissed out a breath when she pressed _hard_ ; when he looked up, somewhere between exasperated and annoyed, her fierce expression caused all of it to turn to dust. “That doesn’t _matter_ , Hux. I think we’re _all_ children of the Empire.”

“What?”

His shock only seemed to make her sad – and it was a sorrow she should not have known, _could_ not have known. “Most of us wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t risen. If it hadn’t existed. If it hadn’t fallen. It’s _there_. It was part of this.” And, again, he had the fleeting impression of what she would look like when she was older: this time, it was by her eyes alone. “How much it’s a part of you now, and later…that’s all up to you.” The sudden flash of uncertainty, quicksilver bright, reminded him again of how she was but a child. “…right?” she asked, and now her voice had turned very small.

And he had never felt more the age difference between them. “Rey,” he began, and then did not know how to end it. She let him go, but still he felt the burn of her touch, the smile that rested only in her eyes.

“What?”

This was simple, honest, and so very helpless. “I have to help you.”

“Well.” She pushed out her lower lip in deep thought, brow furrowed. “I mean, you can _try_ , I guess, but…”

That should have hurt. Yet, somehow, it did not. “But?”

“That’s not really why I came to talk to you.” And then she snorted. “I mean…I can’t really talk to anyone else. They’re all too far away.”

He blinked, just once, very slow. “So you just came and talked to me for the company?”

She flicked a hand out, caught his arm in faint admonition; the slap barely hurt. “You’re so… _twitchy_ ,” she said, and there was power in that. “But I mean…I guess with your family…”

It came too harsh. “I don’t need your pity.”

“I don’t…” For all the wisdom in her eyes but a moment ago, she was still just a child; a frustrated sigh said all that she could not with words. Those small hands were bunched now on her thighs. And he shook his head, wondered if this reality was where he was always doomed to fail.

“Rey, I’m sorry.”

She looked up, her smile watery around its edges. “It’s okay. I know I’m just a kid.”

“I don’t think you’re just a kid at all.” Her eyes widened at his vehemence, though he still could not bring himself to rest a hand upon one shoulder. “I just thought…well.” Pausing, taking a deep breath: they were just excuses. But still, he forged on, in the end. “Gillen – Nahani Gillen, the Senator? – she implied to me that they’re keeping me around because Snoke wants Kylo.” The bitter taste in his mouth was all ash and bone. “And the dreams I’ve been having…well. In another world, Snoke _did_ have Kylo. And I think he tried to get him here, but he failed.”

She nodded. “Because of Mara.”

“You know her?”

For all his surprise, she just flapped her hand at him, like a mother waving a child’s story away for another night. “Your dreams are right. Like – they’re _real_. That’s a real world.”

Much as he had known as much already, it still hurt, somehow. “But Snoke doesn’t just want Kylo,” he said, and felt for the first time the true horror of that.

“He wants me,” she said, so frank in the way she voiced her doom. And then, she smiled. “But you don’t need to worry about that.”

“Of course I’m going to _worry_ about that!” he said, voice rising to a shout – and him, to his feet. She remained seated on nothing and nowhere, and still she smiled.

“I need you to worry about Benny.”

“Kylo’s not _here_ ,” he snapped back, and then his stomach twisted itself into what felt an empty void. “Is he? Oh, that pfassking _idi_ —”

“Benny’s not here,” she interrupted, so sharp and so strong; it was the voice of the woman who would tear down worlds with her will alone. “….well, not yet, anyway.”

“Rey,” he said, and could not go on. She bit her lip, pushed herself upward – and looked away, again.

“It’s not as simple as you think it is.”

It was barely a whisper, but he heard it as loudly as if she’d shouted it into one eye. “ _What_ about _any_ of this has been simple?”

A sigh, and still she looked away – but now, with a kind of concerned expectation that rippled across his skin like rising wind over stormwaters. “Somebody else wants to talk to you,” she whispered, and now his heart curled upon itself, tight and taut.

“I – what?” He dreaded the answer even as he demanded it. “Rey, what are you talking about?”

She shook her head at him, though she didn’t look back – she resembled nothing so much as an animal upon the veld, sensing some predator upon the hunt. “I can _feel_ it. He’s looking for you, now.” And then, almost apologetic: “I have to let you go to him.”

“Kylo?” He already knew it wasn’t. “Is it Kylo?”

It _was_ pity in her eyes, this time. “Benny can’t talk to you like this. Not yet.” Then she looked away, again, to some place Hux could not follow. “It’s someone else.”

“Who?”

A grimace, and she began to walk away. “You’ll see.” Her voice already began to fade, as if she were being swallowed whole by that she was already a vital part of. “He’s…very sad,” she called back, voice tearing with impossible static. “But I don’t like him much. Not like I like you.”

“Have you spoken to him?” he asked, for all he knew conversation would be but impossible. But she did look back, and her eyes were the gold-flecked hue of perfect summer, impossible and ever-lasting.

“Sort of.” And she smiled, pushed at him; despite the growing distance between them, he felt her touch as if she were but a moment away. “You need to go.”

“Rey—“

And he fell back, and knew that—

 

*****

 

_—this is a dream, but he does not recognise the world into which he has been thrust. Then, it comes to him like thunder across all his thoughts: Naboo. This is royal Naboo, loveliest of all the Mid Rim worlds. Home to she who had been Padmé Naberrie, the Amidala Queen and one of the most outspoken voices of the Old Republic._

_And – she had been grandmother, too, to one Ben Organa Solo. Hux has never been to this place, and does not know if even Ben has. In his capacity as aide to Gillen, he had spoken briefly several times with the staff of the current Gungan senator – but aside from that, aside from holo-dramas and historical lessons, he has never seen it._

_But he does not think those encounters would be enough to create what it is that he knows now. It is too much, all at once: the colour is vibrant and visceral, hurting his eyes, reared as they had been on the bland diet of grey durasteel and black space. There’s also a rich scent in the air, thick and heady; if he recalls correctly, Naboo has an atmosphere denser in oxygen than he is accustomed to. It still feels more than that. It leaves him with the sensation that he walks in a dreamworld – and then he scoffs, because this_ is _a dreamworld._

_But when he looks down: it is not as it had just been with Rey. This is too clear, too defined. But it is not as it had been with the general, either. There, he had been trapped in the body of another. Here, when he looks down to the hands he raises, he raises them because they_ are _his own hands. As he has always known them to be. His clothing is not that of his borrowed days in Visdic, of those of Yavin 4 – but instead are the preferred clothing of his days in Coruscant, as if he has somehow stepped back there even as he has stepped forward into this estate._

_Hux does not know what it means. But he is on a path, cobbled and perfect. He looks back, looks forward – it seems much the same either way, though forward moves down towards the lake. So he begins to follow it, drawn by the play of sunlight upon the distant water. It is so at odds with the restless, roiling seas of Arkanis; here, shimmering yachts skim across the faintly rippled surface, the wind gentle and undisturbed by the few clouds overhead. It is as a grand mirror, reflecting only contentment and calm._

_A pavilion curves along the shore, the colour of pearl: white on first pass, the second revealing a rainbow riot of colour beneath. Perhaps he has come too close. He pauses, but even before that he can see there are no people in the general vicinity. Even if there were, it’s not as if he even knows that they would see him – if he is even real. He doubts it, given how alien he is to this place. He knows he does not belong here._

_And he has moved forward even as he considers it; his hands are cool over the railings, filigree and iridescent. He thinks again of her, wonders if this is a queen’s sanctuary. But he does not recall seeing this grand construct in Padmé Amidala’s histories. He raises his eyes to the city beyond, and shivers even as he stares. This is not the world of the general and his knight, but it is not his own, either. Turning away from the water, he moves into the arcade, cool and peaceful. Sanctuary, indeed._

_But even as he draws close to what seems a central courtyard, with endless steps leading down to the very water’s edge, he hears footsteps. Drawing back, into the shadows, he feels his passage like footsteps over his own grave. And then he sees him, too: a man in white, red-headed, crowned in gold. Hux can only stare. The man looks only forward. But it is_ himself—

_“My Emperor.”_

_And he steps forward from the shadows. Tall, dark, made of shadows; he is nothing of Ben Organa Solo, or of Kylo Ren. This is a creature at the height of his power, of his influence over the Force – and then, over the galaxy itself. The hound moves like the night across the sky, immutable and irrefutable. His eyes, dark and flecked with gold are but a wellspring of absolute power: and fixed only upon one outlet._

_The emperor watches his approach, his expression still, his body held taut. “Is it done?”_

_He does not kneel before his master. He instead comes to stand right before him, and only there does he stop. “Exactly as you asked,” he says, even, his voice the play of windsong through distant mountains. And the emperor smiles, his eyes bright victory._

_“Then it is over.”_

_One hand rises; it had been gloved, but a moment ago, and now it is bare. Hux had not seen the unmasking, does not know how it could even have occurred. “Nothing is ever over,” the hound says, and his great hand rests upon the emperor’s face like an artisan contemplating his greatest work in cold marble. “We are still here,” he adds, and the emperor’s expression turns to darkening storm._

_“So you’re to leave me, again?”_

_“Ah, well.” His fingers drift over his lips, and then away. “There is much I might do for you, yet.”_

_The emperor leans close, eyes lightly slitted, his voice the careful edge of play: a feral feline with claws just yet sheathed. “There is much you might do for me here,” he says, and sways close, “always by my side.”_

_The hound does not move, neither forward nor back. “You know you cannot leash me here forever.” But now he leans close, words whispered in his ear; still, Hux hears them as clear as sudden rain. “You might be my master, but the Force has been my mistress since birth.”_

_When the emperor turns his head, their lips are but moments from touch. “And again, she calls you away from me,” he whispers, and his hound sighs._

_“I am still here now.”_

_The emperor’s words are whispered against his skin. “Not enough.” His kiss burns, and the hound leans into it; already his body has become taut as bowstring, rich in a power that comes both from physical strength, and from something so much more than merely that._

_“If you crave my cock so much,” the hound says, “why do we waste time talking?”_

_“It’s not your cock I am concerned for.”_

_“Oh, dear,” and the words come light and mocking, like a sharp blade angled over skin, “was that a declaration of affection?”_

_Gloved fingers clench about his cowl, dragging him close. Any laughter is destroyed utterly by his fierce kiss – and it is returned exactly in kind. The two of them are merrily trapped in some endless battle, and it is a war they are only too willing to wage._

_The ridiculous complications of their outfits do slow their efforts. The hound’s black uniform is a seemingly endless parade of layers, from armour to surcoat to tunics to underthings; the boots and trousers must then be wrested off with more fanfare than strictly necessary. The emperor himself proves buttoned tight into the pressed pristine lines of his Imperial garb, though the hound undresses him with the skill of a trained valet – and for the first time, Hux wonders if he’d had one. If the hound before him now had_ ever _been Ben Organa Solo, son of the last Princess of lost Alderaan._

_Then that does not matter, for they are naked, stretched upon the chaise-lounge, the sunlight upon their bared skin. It’s left them lazy, for the meantime; hands over curves, sinuous twist of slim body against strong. It is the emperor who changes it up, again, one hand in the centre of his broad chest to push his hound back. The man pushes forward in turn, one eyebrow raised in mocking challenge._

_“Who says I want to take your cock?” His hand drifts down, pumps himself with lazy promise. “How about you take mine?”_

_The emperor rolls his eyes, looks down with a kind of scorn utterly at odds with the frankly impressive organ displayed between them. “That ridiculous thing?” he says, and Hux almost wants to laugh; the hound has pouted, in turn, as Hux pokes him square between the pectorals. “I haven’t the time for that sort of nonsense.”_

_“You were just sitting here, staring at the sky.” It’s sullen, so very much like Kylo that for a moment, Hux must look away. “You were waiting for me.”_

_“I was not.”_

_And he rolls his eyes, stretched upon his back, hands behind his head, now. “Because there are not a thousand other things the absolute ruler of the galaxy could have been doing.”_

_“Yes, and if I’d just been standing around purposefully waiting for your cock, I’d have stuck my fingers up my ass while I was doing so.”_

_“Oh, if only you had.” His eyes light up, like a laser cannon beginning its charge cycle. “Do you know how much I’d have liked that – walking in here, fresh from my mission, to find you bent over, trousers around your ankles, ass in the air and fingers down deep?”_

_He snorts, but his disdain is but thin gauze over the rising interest. “I’ll keep it in mind.”_

_“For next time?”_

_His words turn cool, serious. “There had better_ be _a next time.”_

_“There will always be a next time.”_

_And then, he’s rolling him over, settling him with sudden care upon his stomach, a bolster beneath his hips. There’s some unspoken compromise, in that: and, to, in the lips and tongue that then move down between his cheeks. The callused hand in the front coaxes him to full hardness in turn, his way slicked by oil from a nearby decanter, obviously fit and ready for this purpose. But then: from their knowing movements, this is a place where they are often overcome by such passions._

_With such skill as the hound apparently has, the emperor comes soon, pressing back into the fingers curled in his ass even as the hand before coaxes out his cock out past some impossible limit. It leaves him relaxed, half-drowsing, though those same fingers continue to stretch him open. Hux wonders if he might actually have fallen asleep, but then hound is encouraging him over. So easily do those pale thighs spread wide, eyes half-hooded and teasing._

_“Are you ready?” It is but a curled half-smile. “Your majesty?”_

_He smirks upward, so utterly secure in his own power. “Do it.”_

_The hound sheathes himself in one stroke. Hux can only watch the tableau, his own groin an aching mass of want in his tightly-laced trousers. He watches, and he waits: for what, he does not know. This is nothing of what it had been between the general, and the knight. It is pleasure, and it is passion, and it has none of the agony that had been so fundamental to everything those two had been together._

_When he pulls out, he does not go far. But even the emperor does not protest the weight upon him, great and encompassing as it must be. And the hound’s lips are again by his ear, soft and knowing._

“ _I am yours, as you are mine.”_

_“Foolish boy.” He draws him down, lips against his closed eyes. “As if it could ever be any other way.”_

_Hux turns, and he walks away. He feels no need to hide his steps; he doubts they would hear a thing of him. He is not real, anyway. He does not exist, here. But it is still so strange, to see it this way. To see_ them _like this._

_“What did you expect?” The words are sneered, for all they remain genteel perfect oratory. “That we would bathe in the blood of our enemies, and then fuck in the same?”_

_Hux turns, startled. This is another man, dressed all in white. But he is older – not so old as his own father, perhaps, but he is making his way there. The red hair has only just begun its autumnal turn to silver, and it shimmers beneath the thin woven gold of the coronet he wears._

_He is like the other – like the_ Emperor _– but then, he_ is _the emperor of this reality. Just one more aged than the other Hux has so recently left behind. Time has taken him to somewhere in his fifties, perhaps; his face has been gently lined, though there is something inflexible in the bright shine of his eyes – a hardness, adamant as diamond, as if he has been forged in some fire he had never thought anyone would have the temerity to light in his very presence._

_“I am only forty-six,” he says, and Hux frowns. “And no, I am no Jedi, no Sith, no wielder of the Force, untrained or not.” A faint smile, unkind and unyielding, crosses his face; somehow, it only makes him handsome. “Your expression is as transparisteel, to me.”_

_There is something about him that Hux should be able to read, in turn. But he cannot. And, he cannot help but ask, “Who_ are _you?”_

_He snorts. “You know who I am.”_

_“You’re me,” he says, and it is but a whisper. With the speed of serpentine strike one hand fists in his collar, drags him close, and he is_ laughing _, low and soft and every moment of it is like a blade to the gut._

_“Oh, no, Brendol Hux Jr,” he says, and now each word aims only for total evisceration, “oh, I’m_ so _much more than_ that _.”_

 

*****

 

Sitting bolt upright was a mistake; it brought only disorientation, desperation. When he rolled over the roiling nausea worsened, became the only thing that mattered, urgent and urging. Struggling to his feet, Hux slipped, braced himself for the fall. A hand on his arm dragged him back from the edge; half-blinded, he turned towards it, slave to an inbuilt instinct that demanded warmth and care.

But it turned instead to pressure, bringing him forward; he stumbled, stretched out a hand, banged it against the doorway of the ‘fresher. A moment later and he was encouraged further forward, and then gently down. Bent over the necessary, finally he could throw up what little he’d eaten that morning. Breathing hard between bursts, he waited for it to pass. Something pressed against his hand; he turned it, found it to be a tumbler, cool water sloshing within.

“Drink.”

He did not take it. His eyes stung where he looked up, just barely focusing upon the creature of white and gold before him. “ _You_.”

Indeed it was Nahani Gillen herself, sitting back on her heels in his very ‘fresher. “You did want to see me,” she said, reproachful and slow.

“I—” Hux turned, vomited again. Though he did not need to, not immediately, he then closed eyes and did not look back to her. The humiliation of being seen this way burned far deeper than it had any right to, given the higher circumstances of this disaster that called itself his life.

“I could wait for you.” Her voice was the grace and beauty of still waters. “In the sitting room.”

There were so many things he might have said to that. He managed only one. “Yes.” And already he was berating himself for a coward, a fool, not even strong enough to overcome a little sickness and speak with any semblance of dignity. And so he keep his head bent, and willed himself better.

Complete stillness would gift him the illusion of wellness returned, but the moment he made the slightest movement, it brought with it the return of griping stomach pain, a mouthful of bile, his vision tight and grey around its edges. With his headache still pounding behind his eyes, Hux forced himself to slow his breathing, though it only pulled harder at his aching abdomen. Even as it calmed, and he chanced greater and longer movement, it ended in further retching, and that more than once. Breathing slower now, through his nose, he turned his head to where the untouched water sat, mocking him from its place upon the tiled floor.

The fear that she would have lost all patience with him and left was a genuine one. But that was surpassed by the greater terror that she would still be waiting for him whenever he emerged. When he did rise at last, faintly shaking, he turned to his reflection. He found it white-faced and wan, eyes over-large and far too bright.

But long inbred habit had him smoothing his collar, the unfamiliar fashion causing him only a moment’s pause. He then set about tidying his shirt, his trousers, the embroidered house-slippers; his hair followed, re-ordered with the faintest hint of fresh product. There was little he could do for his blank expression. Closing his eyes, briefly, he breathed deeper still – this was so much like the moments he had been called to his father’s offices, when he’d been a boy.

He’d always known what awaited him, there. Hux walked out now without knowledge of the nature of his punishment. But he did know that he would meet it stone-faced and cold.

Gillen was not there. His entire body might have sagged with something like relief, had long discipline not taught him otherwise. It still left uncertain where to go. If there was anywhere even left for him, now.

A voice floated out to him from the open balcony. “Come join me, Bren.”

Wincing at the peculiarity of the nickname, he turned, paused. But then, given that Gillen’s association with his father went far deeper than he would have thought otherwise before, perhaps the truncated form made sense. He himself rarely used his full given name. He already resembled his father enough, without that reminder too.

He moved stiffly to the balcony, took a seat there only when she indicated he should. “I thought you had left.”

“Why would I leave you?”

And she actually waited for his answer. In turn Hux only looked out towards the city, thought again of the rolling fields at the edge of the starport, their golden crop waiting for harvest. She was the first to surrender, but the reproachful look in her eyes made him feel as though he was the one who had lost.

“You wished to speak with me?”

It was dull, flat. “You want me to summon Kylo here.”

A raised eyebrow, but her voice remained conservational; he still noted the way her right hand tightened. “We’ve discussed this, yes. Are you ready to do so?”

“No.” He leaned forward, voice taking on a persuasive tone for all he had no real cards to play in this game. “I want an explanation.”

She reacted not at all. “You already have one.”

“There’s more to it, isn’t there.” He let his lip curl, for all he kept his teeth to himself. “Probably even more than my father knows. But _you_ know it.”

Tilting her head, she looked like nothing so much as a mother humouring her child. “And what do I know, Bren?”

The words came surprisingly hard, knotted as they were in the tight mass that was his abdomen. “From the first day I met Kylo, I’ve dreamed of him. Of myself.” He paused, swallowed back fresh bile. “But they _weren’t_ us. They were other versions, from a different place. Skywalker saw it. It’s how we _met_.” The breath he took now tasted of sickness, of death. “So Snoke must know of it, too.”

“And why would Snoke tell me of such things? I am not one with the Force. It’s entirely beyond my purview.”

The truth in that meant nothing. “But you wouldn’t allow it to be.” For the first time, he wondered if his biological mother had been this driven, this mad; then he supposed she had been, if she’d joined the Rebellion. “You’re in this deep. You wouldn’t go so far without knowing what is really going on.”

With a sigh, she sat back in the chair, waved at him. “Sit down, Bren.”

He hadn’t even realised he had stood back up. “Are you going to answer my questions?”

Her pale eyes met his, unwavering as the sky of her homeworld. “You’re a smart boy. You know there is only so much I could ever tell you.”

“But will you?”

The lips twitched, but no more. “You are my nephew.”

“Bloodlines are not unimpeachable connections.”

“No. But they are as tight as nooses, sometimes.” This time, she sharpened her voice to whipcrack. “Sit _down_.”

Much as he’d been theoretically bred to high command, Hux had also been designed to take those orders himself. And he did so. She watched him as he sat stiffly before her, lovely as always with her swept-back hair and the long slim gown in shades of grey and silver. He’d always thought she held resemblance to Maratelle. And it must have shown on his face, because she sighed, her eyes gone faintly distant.

“Yes, I do look like your mother. Like Joni, I mean.” Then something hardened in her expression, lips gone very thin. “Brendol rather does have a type.”

“Please tell me you haven’t fucked my father.”

In the silence that followed, her expression had turned to an almost genteel kind of fury, withheld but never hidden. Hux only set his own jaw, and raised his chin high.

“I’m not going to apologise.”

“If your father ever touched me,” she began, very slow, very easy, “I would begin by ripping out every fingernail by the root. Then I’d continue upwards, knuckle by knuckle, joint by joint.” Now her voice crept through the air like a blade over skin, just light enough to cut. “And I’d make it _last_ ,” she hissed, before smiling in a way that would have given even his younger self nightmares. “How long do you think a man would last, if he were but head and torso?”

He sat very still, unmoved. “That’s very bloodthirsty of you.”

“He has that effect on people.” Her gaze did not waver. “As I’m sure you yourself have noticed.”

He met it even and true. “I’m not here to talk about my father.”

Now she leaned back, the odd violence of only moments ago already vanished. He thought there was rather a lot his father did not know about Nahani Gillen, if he’d thought there was any need to send her away from the execution of her former staffer.

“You had a different dream,” she said, sudden. Hux only nodded.

“I did.”

With a sigh, she turned her head, out over the city. He had a vague idea, then, of what she might look like as a very old woman: a face lined like the furrows of a ploughed field, or where rivers cut through mountains to run at last to the sea.

“The thing is,” she began, slow, “that people like you and me – we don’t control the fate of the galaxy. Oh, we might _think_ we could. But we don’t have that power.”

No. Only those like Leia Organa could lay claim to such: she barely reached his chest, this woman of some fifty-odd years, in her slim small body. But she had _radiated_ power. She had been as the singularity at the centre of everything: drawing them all close to her orbit, knowing that she would never let them go.

“That’s what the Force is. Or so I think. It’s a catalyst of change, and it works through those it favours. It _gives_ them that influence, to work its will.”

“You think it has consciousness?”

A slight scoffing was all she gave; it disturbed him more to realise he did not quite believe it. “I think it seeks _something_. But I don’t need to ascribe it personal whims and wants to assume it has some direction in its workings.” Her bitterness matched his own when she said, “And you and I, we are not chosen. We are not those “blessed” enough to be privy to its gifts.” A pause, and then, hard: “Or prey, as it were.”

The memory of Kylo was a potent one – back on Yavin 4, his body and mind wracked almost to ruin by even the briefest of contacts with Snoke, via Hux himself. A prickling sensation moved under his skin, strange and uncertain. A second later, Hux realised he was _angry_.

“Then why am I even here?”

“You know why you’re here.” There was something like irritation, something like resignation in her words now. “You’ve obviously met him.”

He could not help but prod her deeper. “Who?”

She paused a long moment over the words. “The Emperor.”

While he’d expected as much, it still left him cold. There’d never been much point in hoping he’d imagined it. He just didn’t have the right kind of imagination for madness in that degree. “So he is part of this.”

“Bren.” Weariness seeped into every word. “He’s been part of this since the beginning.”

Having such suspicion confirmed made it no easier. “But you said yourself, I’m not Force-sensitive.” Shaking his head, he added, voice rising, “ _He_ said the same thing!”

“But he fell in love with a Skywalker.” The heaviness of the words hung over him as a blade of a guillotine. “That’s a very poor idea, in any given reality.”

Swallowing hard, Hux bit back on sudden memory of Han Solo – of those first and few words he had ever spoken to Hux. _I’d like to say it was some fool Jedi nonsense, but who’s to even know what’s in his head these days?_ That man alone would know the mistake of what they all had done.

_But he loves her, still_.

And he thought again of the Emperor at the end of the dream, cold and unmoving. The lines of grief—

“He’s dead.” It hit him hard, left him breathless. “The Kylo in his reality. The one who belonged to the Emperor. He’s _dead_.”

“Yes.”

He could have laughed, for the patent absurdity of it all. “So now he wants mine.”

“Well, he’s not really _yours_ , as such,” she corrected, so light, so easy. “But you are in a unique position to… _encourage_ him to make certain choices, yes. And he would prefer it that way. It would…easier, to make the transition, if he goes willingly. Or so I’m led to believe.”

The nausea returned like roused storm, forcing him to put his head between his knees or disgrace himself utterly. There, curled upon himself, he could think only of the delicate ferocity, in how they’d been together. His head still swam with vicious ache when he looked up, words croaked out.

“What happened?”

Such simple words: but they encompassed so many questions, and their endless answers. “Well,” and her voice had an uncertain note usually so absolute in its absence, “from what I gather, in that reality he became Emperor with that particular Kylo’s assistance.” Faint scorn entered her words, now. “But while the Emperor was content enough with his politics, his hound…never stopped studying the Force. He just went deeper, and deeper.”

Hux looked away, even as his eyes saw only the memory of the two, together – of how gently the hound had laid his hand upon his emperor’s cheek, and leaned in so very very close. “He got himself killed.”

“He erased himself from that entire reality, apparently.” The sharp intake of breath from Hux made her sigh, the resigned sound of a person who might never understand such superstition. “I suppose in retrospect that that might account for some of the…strangeness…of the Organa boy. Having some part of yourself removed from existence, no matter how distant, must have some effect on a person.”

Hux closed his eyes, still saw only the gold-flecked singularities that had been those of the hound. “The fool,” he whispered, and felt rather than heard Gillen’s assent.

“He was looking for something. Apparently he never could find simply in service to the Emperor alone.” When he looked to hear again, weary, he found her pressing her lips together, disapproval radiating from every inch. “So I suppose he wants to try again. Start over.”

His voice rasped against the agony of his too-tight throat, as though oxygen were a gift he might never be given again. “That’s not how it works.”

“In this case, yes. It is how it will work.” She fixed her eyes upon him, a siege taking no prisoners, leaving no survivors. “We have been given a unique opportunity. And we have every intention of taking it.”

“But Snoke wants Kylo.”

“No, he doesn’t.” Her voice strengthened, a zealot finding her true footing. “Not when he has something better.”

He said it as if it were some surprise. But he could still see her in his mind, so young and so powerful and so sure of her own destiny. “Rey.”

“Yes.” Something like pride had entered her voice now. “I wondered when you’d come to that conclusion.”

_She doesn’t know_. That left him dizzied, again; he closed one hand tight about the arm of his chair, held himself upright. “That was why you came to Yavin 4. Not for me. It was for _her_.”

“Don’t be obtuse, Bren. You are completely necessary to the completion of this transaction,” she replied, almost annoyed. “But the fact she was also there at the time? It was a benefit, yes.” And then she actually snorted, her disgust clearly displayed. “In fact, given the circumstances, I don’t think they even realised she was missing at all for quite some time.”

“But surely they suspect you now.”

Her shrug was perfectly unconcerned. “I’m yet to hear any accusations on their part.”

“Leia Organa is no fool.” The dread had returned, twisting low in his stomach; the Order would not risk everything if they did not have something to play in return. “They’ll be watching you, now.”

“Much good as it will do them.” The datapad hadn’t told him everything of their operation. But now, he wondered exactly how far their power had stretched, this early in the timeline. The general had shown him how far it could go. But now—

“If you want Kylo, he won’t come,” he said, voice rough. “Not if his mother tells him otherwise.”

Her laughter came bright and burning. “Do you actually _believe_ that?”

He could not answer that. They both knew why. “How did you even know this would happen?” he asked instead, changing tactics; she followed easily, always a master in the debating chamber.

“Because of the Emperor.”

“What is it you’re hoping to achieve?” he asked, and didn’t bother hiding his confusion. “He is Emperor _there_. He’s obviously not going to leave his reality and come to yours, and annex the place on your behalf.”

“He might, actually. Apparently he had rather a good time, subjugating his own reality.” And Hux knew he had, because he would have been the same. “But you’re right. He has no interest in that. He seeks a renewal of the only relationship that meant anything to him.”

The prickling across his skin was as the touch of some absent ghost – caught in the memory of those gloved hands, on the warm body he himself had known by briefly, wrapped in quilts upon the veranda of a Jedi commune. “From what I could see, you want to restore the Empire,” he said, low. “But you have no Emperor.”

“No. We do not.” She smiled, sudden and shining in her joy. “We shall have an Empress.”

The impossible thought hit him hard: her golden head, crowned and held high. The truth came just a moment later, and felt to be a killing blow. “It’s Rey. Snoke wants to make _Rey_ the Empress.”

“And she will be glorious.” She glowed with it, contentment radiating from her like light from a supernova star. “Palpatine is gone. But Rey will be greater than he ever was.”

He could only stare at her, perplexed, somehow afraid. “How can you _know_ that?”

Still, she only smiled. “Because only one strong in the Force can sit in such a seat.”

“But _I_ do. In that reality.”

“The _Emperor_ does,” she corrected, and now her pleasure began to fade, turning into something darker, pitying. “Because you’ve already made _your_ choices. This is what you wanted.” She raised a hand, let it fall. “And you’ll have it.” Her voice hardened further. “If you’ll just call him here, and give him over.”

“How is any of this my choice?”

“Bren.” Impatience did not suit her. “You’ve lost too much time. This is what you are. Here, and now.”

“A lap dog to a lackey?”

“You still have the skills of a master engineer, Hux. There’s work for you there, if you want it.” Her smile brought only a particularly nasty thought – the Order might even now be building Starkiller, in this reality. And perhaps, for all the general’s pride in his creation, he had never been integral to it, no matter the circumstance.

And still, she smiled onward. “And you will be high in her court, you realise? She already favours you. If not for the age difference, perhaps you might even have been the favoured choice for her consort.”

Appalled, he could only stare in perfect disbelief. “You’re mad.”

“No,” she said, in perfect serenity, “No, I’m just good at my job.” But her voice hardened, then, became that of a parent who punished only for the good of her growing child. “The New Republic is failing already. You know that. Only one person of great strength can hold this galaxy together. Rey, with her pedigree and potential, will be the one to do so.”

His own voice had turned just as hard, for all he could himself feel the cracks beneath its surface. “And in the meantime, you just give Kylo away.”

She shrugged, just light. “He’s not needed, here.”

Closing his eyes, he also closed his lips around the words his mind still screamed. _I need him_.

She heard. The Force did not favour those such as themselves, but still she heard. And Hux opened his eyes, voice dragging like gravel over naked skin. “But my own other self is tearing apart realities to have Kylo by his side.” He set his chin, raised an eyebrow, felt the shadow of a man before amassed armies behind his words. “What makes you think I won’t do the same?”

Her smile was all but a tender stroke his hair, a token gesture of affection before putting a tantruming toddler down for his nap. “Because you’re not him,” she said, and it was oh so very gentle. “You’re not the general who destroys him. You’re not the emperor who craves him. You’re just the Brendol Hux who gave him up.”

He smiled, and did not even know why. “But it hasn’t happened yet.”

“Hasn’t it?” This time she did lean over, patting his hand twice before he snatched it back. “You can think about it all you like, Bren. I’ll give you that time if you want it.” Folding her own hands back on her lap, she added, “But you don’t need it. Not really.”

“And why not?”

She opened her hands, almost helpless – for all she could never be anything of the sort. “Because you belong to the Empire.” There were no smiles now: only the cool certainty of one indoctrinated. “You’ll build it again. Because it’s in your blood.” Her voice was a siren call, rich and inviting. “The Empire needs its children, Bren. So come on home.”

In the chill that followed, he bowed his head, and did not move. The question came only from numb lips.

“Why did I dream of the General?” he asked. “Why don’t you just go and take _his_ Kylo, instead of mine?”

“Kylo Ren, Master of the Knights of Ren?” A faint snort, and she leaned back; there was something terribly casual in the way she crossed one leg over the other now, a hand flashing out in dismissive wave. “He’s broken. Ruined. Of no use to anyone, really.” And then her eyes rolled to match. “Well, save for the fact his antics, and those of the general, proved enough to bring you and this Kylo into one another’s orbits.”

“Just to be parted,” he said, and for the first time he saw clear irritation in the way she straightened, but a moment from standing.

“Why are you focusing on that? You know that that path was never truly open to you.” Now she did push to her feet, tall and lovely. “And this? _This_ is your truest opportunity. To become everything that you wanted to be, in this galaxy.”

He looked up at her, voice flat. “Why settle for this? I could be _emperor_.”

“No. _You_ couldn’t. Your other self might have become so, utterly against all odds. But you are not him.” And this scorn, he’d never heard from her before. “He would not have allowed a parasite to his greatness like Chadri Dio to live, for starters.”

“How did he die?”

“You didn’t do it. So it doesn’t matter.” Smoothing one hand back over her hair, she turned away. “Call me when you are ready to speak with Ben Organa Solo.” She didn’t even look back when she added, “I’ll open your comms, for that.”

“And if I don’t?”

She paused but a moment, in the open door. “We both know it’s a problem that will only solve itself.”

Then she was gone – and it closed, again, in her silent wake.

 

*****

 

The datapad in his hands could hardly hope to hold back the darkness outside. Still Hux stared at the damned thing, frustration rising in him like magma beneath a capped caldera. The general would find something in it. The emperor would not leave it lie, waiting for something to happen.

_And what are you? The failed senator’s aide?_

One thrust of his arm sent it flying across the room. He did not need to look, to follow the crunching sound, to know that it had broken. It was not as though it even mattered. The general, the last Hux had seen him, had been lying in the arms of a man who loved him – and yet he had never felt more alone, with his life’s work in ruins and his ego even lower. The emperor still had everything that he had built in his own name – but the only creature he’d ever given even a damn about was gone, utterly and completely.

_And what do you have? Neither of those things. You have nothing. You_ are _nothing._

The fury of it rose in him, fierce fiery tempest. And with it came the desire to break something more substantial, something far more vital than just the damned datapad. And he could just close his eyes, borrow the memory of the general: the way the glorious red blade of his own creation had cut across the galaxy like a blade, cutting through five worlds as though they were one furious swing. And then, there had been the way he had taken his pleasure of a broken bleeding knight—

Opening his eyes, Hux found that he had stood, entirely without thinking of doing so. And his attention moved to the opened door, to the balcony beyond. Even though time had since passed late into night, he didn’t suppose there was much of a petty crime problem on Uyter; surely he could walk the streets and not fear for his own safety. Given the discipline of the Order, taken from his memories of childhood, he could not think any citizen of a world claimed as their own would act in so reckless a fashion.

And he sat down heavily upon the nearest chair, the weight of it sudden and suffocating. His life on Coruscant had been a carnival of grey doubt, moving too fast, never waiting for him to catch up. But even when he held grimly on and gone for the ride, there had never been any pleasure in it. It had always come so easy to those who were invited, but never to one such as himself.

But a return to the Order meant a return to another hell entire: to go back to a world that had been his own, but held no joy for anyone outside of what was expected to bring glory to everyone…to be but part of a larger whole, with no real value bestowed upon the individual. To only have value in what he was worth to others – in what he could do, for the greater good.

_Can I do that?_

Moving now, out on the balcony, he could taste between the grind of his teeth the bitter memory of the conversation with Gillen. It drove him back inside in moments, and there he laid himself down upon his bed. But he could not sleep. Hux doubted that he could open the connection with Rey, but he feared the consequence of trying. Whatever else she was, she was still a child, and an untrained one at that; for all he knew, their earlier conversation had already alerted someone to his prior knowledge of her presence. Gillen hadn’t seemed concerned in telling him so earlier, but as an accomplished liar himself, he knew such matters could not be taken at that kind of face value.

Rising, again, he again paced himself back outside. There was no real reason for avoiding sleep this way, for all it would not come. But he doubted that he wanted to know what the general had done since their last meeting – or what the emperor thought of his alternate self, in this wretched reality. With hands tight around the balcony’s balustrade – as if he would ever have the sense enough to thrust himself over the edge! – Hux looked up to the unfamiliar sky, and wondered if the bars of a prison cell had ever been so bright, so numerous.

The rustling below turned his head, sharp as a soldier at his watchpost. Though his body had instinctively taken gone very still he heard nothing more; he strained further even as he did not move. He’d pursed his lips, not quite ready to pass it off as imagination but not yet willing to indulge it further, when a new sound all but exploded from beneath him. And from the source of that sound something _launched_ , flinging itself upward to grasp at the balustrade, heaving itself up and over and onto the now shared balcony.

Hux had no blaster, but instinct turned him immediately for a makeshift weapon; the closest approximation he had was one of the spindly-legged chairs. But before he could get any kind of grip upon one, weight like a wall propelled him back and into the sitting room, even though the shadow remained panting at a distance. A shout strangled itself to silence in his throat as it then followed, stalking him as he was forced back through the doors to his bedroom, and onto the bed.

His body ached to fight. But for all his hands were effectively claws, adrenaline flooding every muscle and leaving it taut and tense, he was paralysed. He could taste the blood he desired to spill on his tongue, in his throat, and yet he was unable to move no matter how he willed it, his captor still that dark shadow looming on and over him.

Then, it gave a nervous laugh, and sat back.

“Hux.” Clearing its throat, it tried again. “Um. Don’t hit me, okay?”

That damned voice would have frozen him, had he even had the capability to move in the first place. The unseen restraints vanished a moment later, the lights blazing on. It left Hux squinting upward at Kylo Organa, wild-haired and wide-eyed, and oh so very _real._

But worse than that, was the ridiculous _grin_ that he wore.

“Kylo.” He said it dumbly, idiotically. His voice then raised to furious shout. “What the pfassking hell are you _doing_ here?” What came next was involuntary, perfectly incredulous: “And _how_ did you even get here?”

Affronted, now, Kylo seemed to have forgotten entirely the importance of keeping Hux quiet. “I can pilot!” he said, arms folded across his chest – not as broad as that of Kylo Ren, of the Emperor’s Hound. But then, he was only seventeen. As the frustration turned to sudden sharp fear, Hux could only stare in wonder at the ruin of his life.

Before his eyes, Kylo deflated, shoulders sagged forward, still straddling Hux as though he were some foresworn enemy. “All right, all right, so – I talked Poe into it.” As he frowned, his eyes grew distant with the memory of some part altercation. “Not that I really had to _talk_ him into it,” he muttered, and then his own voice rose in force and certainty. “Not when I told him Rey was here.”

It should have come as no surprise. Still, it hit Hux like defeat, the defining blow to end the match entire. “How do you even know that?” he whispered, and Kylo had the gall to actually _snort_.

“It’s pretty obvious.”

Taking a deep breath, Hux first shifted his legs; Kylo obligingly moved his weight back off them. Levering himself upright, Hux took a place seated on the edge of the bed, and let his head fall into his hands. It at least hid the shaking of them. “And so is something else,” he muttered, and heard the scowl in Kylo’s answer.

“What?”

He looked up, eyes blazing, his heart a staccato ache that felt fit to rip itself free of its fragile cage. “It’s a _trap_ , you idiot!” he shouted, not caring who might here. “I don’t know how you landed in Visdic, or how you found me, or how you got into this house – but I can promise you, you didn’t get here by stealth, or by Dameron being the best pilot in the galaxy. They _wanted_ you to come here!”

His brow furrowed. “Why?”

And he laughed, but only for a short, hiccupping moment; undignified as it might have sounded, it would have been far worse for them all had he simply dissolved into the hysteria that beckoned so temptingly. “Because they want _you_ ,” he snapped, and invoked a weapon that came too easy to his hand. “ _Snoke_ wants you.”

Though he flinched, Kylo did not break their gaze. “Then I’ll kill him,” he said, so simple, so pragmatic – and, aghast, Hux could only remember his conversations with Rey. And how she’d been exactly the same.

_Are they_ all _really this insane?_

“What?” It was all he could manage. Kylo only shrugged, as if the suggestion had been that he pop down to the local store and buy them all a round of pink ice-cream.

“I’ll just have to kill him. If that’s what it takes.”

“Kylo.” He choked on it. “You’re mad.”

“Well, I didn’t actually come here to kill him,” he pointed out, again so matter-of-fact Hux could have screamed. “I came here for _you_. And for Rey.”

“And entirely without a plan!”

He smiled, that crooked lovely smile that crinkled up his eyes and seemed only made of the purest joy. “I figured that was more your style than mine.”

Leaning back, Hux turned his eyes to the ceiling, spoke to the sky beyond as if that had any hope of – or interest in – saving them now. “So your entire plan was ‘get to Hux, and he’ll make the rest up as he goes along.’”

“It’s what you’re good at.” So close he moved, and Hux shivered; the scent of him was of Yavin 4, all sultry heat and welcome hands. “Right?”

Again, he let a heavy head fall into palms that really could not support it long. “It’s not even Snoke who really wants you,” he said, muffled by misery; Kylo again could only frown.

“What?”

He looked up, and knew his eyes would be wild and red-rimmed. But he supposed this really was the time for looking like a madman. “How do you know I’m not responsible for Rey being here? She was obviously taken at the same time I _left_.” The tone turned ugly, demanding, like a man determined to cause the most hurt to the one he loved best. “You came here to rescue her, and presumably me at the same time.” And now he laughed, twisted and taut. “Don’t you remember that I _wanted_ to come here?”

When Kylo stared at him now, eyes wide, Hux for a moment saw his features bisected by a catastrophic wound, pale and half-drained of blood. “Hux. You don’t want this.”

“You don’t even know what _this_ is!”

For a moment, Hux thought that Kylo would throw himself across the bed. That his world would become lips, hands, thighs: tangling them together in a kind of passion he’d never really experienced. But Kylo had bit his own lip, was pushing up from the bed, turning away, beginning to pace.

Then he stopped, turned, stared at him as if he’d had some sort of damned revelation. “You’re not a bad person.”

“Oh, Kylo.” Resisting the urge to just flop back on the bed and give up on all of this actually _hurt_. “Of course I am.”

“Well, maybe we _all_ are,” he said, stubborn to a fault. “Did you ever think of that?”

Crossing one leg over the other, smoothing out his trousers, Hux kept his back straight and eyes on Kylo alone. “Maybe _we_ are,” he said, and then allowed himself a hollow chuckle. “But Skywalker? Your cousin? Your _mother_?” He threw his arms up, let them fall. “Who could possibly say _they_ were evil?”

“It’s all a matter of perspective.” But he’d turned away, leaving himself in profile, brow creased and eyes deeply trouble. “You could say that my uncle’s a terrorist, that my mother’s deeply embedded in an unlawful government that took power by force from the legitimate governing body. And for some people? That _is_ entirely their truth. And just because it’s not mine, it doesn’t mean it’s not _theirs_.” And then he moved forward, preternatural and terrifying, going to his knees before Hux’s own. “But you don’t really want to be here,” he said, urgent, hard. “I can _feel_ it.”

“Well, where _else_ can I be?” It exploded from him, fury at the situation, the faintest terror at having Kylo in this position before him. “What choice do I have?!”

His broad hands tightened over his knees, and he looked up to him like knight to liege lord. “You could come with me.”

He meant to scoff; he was just lucky it did not turn to a sob. “And go where?”

A shrug, careless, for all the intensity of his gaze never left his own. “Anywhere.”

Bending his head now did not quite feel like surrender, but still, he could barely speak the words aloud. “You’re only a child.”

“And I’ll grow up.”

He closed his eyes. “This is ridiculous.”

In the darkness, he heard Kylo move; he had risen to his feet, again, taking his place at his side. “There’s something you’re not telling me,” he said, very soft. “What is it?”

Looking to him, bleary-eyed and so very weary, he did not even try to hide it. “Does it even matter?”

Kylo’s eyes had narrowed, and though the expression could have been pitying, he somehow managed to make it something that Hux didn’t want to hit him for. “You always think you’re trapped,” he said, faintly wondering. “You don’t have to be.”

“What, are _you_ going to save me?”

“I think, in the end, we kind of have to save ourselves.” His hand reached between them, took his. “But we can help each other. If we want.”

“Kylo.” He looked down, wanted to pull them apart, even if he did not. And it ached, to know that the galaxy would likely soon do that for them, whether they permitted it to or not. “Even if I wanted to go with you—”

“Do you?”

The fierceness of it had him rearing back, as if startled by a wild animal. “What?”

“Want to come with me.” And he’d dropped his hand, but both of his own now came up, pressing Hux’s face between them. He could look nowhere else but to those dark brown eyes as he said, sharp, “It’s a simple question.”

His lips curled. “As if it has a simple answer.”

“But it does.”

“That doesn’t change—”

“ _Do. You_.”

The intensity of those dark eyes had always been too much: drawing him in, dragging him down, drowning him, even as he never even approached death.

He could not close his own. There was only one way left.

“Yes.”

And he let him go, sitting back, even as Hux felt the weight of it there still. “There you go,” he said, hands rising and falling as though he himself had just set the basic tenets of the universe. Hux could only grimace; Kylo might not be as young as Rey, but it seemed she probably had a better understanding of the mess they were in, for all she was barely eight years old.

“ _Kylo_.” When he looked over, he tried again. “They wanted you to come here. Do you understand that? Whether I asked you to do it, or you just went off half-cocked and did it anyway…it’s all the same to them.”

But he shook his head. “No, it’s different.”

“What?”

“Because you made a choice.” Pushing himself to his feet, now, he brushed off his trousers; for the first time, Hux noted the heavy hilt hanging from the belt at his side. “We need to find Rey,” he added, and Hux scowled, already feeling a headache building. But then, he’d always loved to plan. And they had never needed one more than they did now.

“Where the hell is Dameron?” he asked, as a beginning; of course, Kylo only blinked, gave an answer both technically correct and also perfectly useless.

“Waiting for us.”

Frustration welled, again. “Do you even know _where_ to start looking for Rey? Because I certainly don’t. She actually _talked_ to me, but it was the pfassking _Force_ —”

“We’ll find her.”

The certainty in that voice made him want to believe. “You really are insane,” he said, instead, and Kylo actually laughed.

“It’s genetics. And midichlorians.” His lips pursed, eyes going distant and thoughtful. “Or are midichlorians genetic and that’s all the same thing?”

Pressing fingertips to his right temple, he began a slow circular movement. “I have a headache.”

“Yeah, we have that effect on people.” His grin was entirely too wide. “Skywalkers. You know how it is.”

“I do _now_.”

It seemed impossible, that he could smile any wider. Then the door of the sitting room, just beyond the bedroom, exploded open. A burst of light had him cursing, covering his eyes even as he shot to his feet; he could make out the shape of enforcer droids, two of them stepping together into the small space. And Kylo – already Kylo was _spinning_ , the air about him electric and alive: the memory of the emperor’s hound, dark and sleek and so _beautiful_ , his saber crackling to life.

But he froze. A snarl of the most pure and frustrated rage rose in his throat, escaped as a _howl_ – but still, he did not move. Hux turned, saw two humanoid figures: a tall robed figure, slim and silent. Not Gillen: this stranger was something far different, her very presence crackling with rich unseen energy, as though she were dark matter and could be seen only by how the world reacted around her. But it was the one at his side who stuttered its heart to tight stop, his breath caught, mind shut down.

Brendol Hux Sr. stood there, hand upon the holster at his side. And Hux did not think, did not pause. The hilt of Kylo’s lightsaber felt surprisingly cool, for all the hum of the unstable blade burning above it. Yanking it from the stiffened hand was hard; it was harder still to ignore the dark eyes filled with raging panic above them.

He’d already know it didn’t matter, not now. But the rest of his life had narrowed to these few seconds, pitiful and passing too slow. But he would not stand there and merely let them pass him by. As the blaster rose, Hux fell into one of the stances Kylo had taught him that distant afternoon on Yavin 4. Already his arms ached with the weight of the impossible weapon, never meant for one such as himself.

_Hux_ , a voice shrilled out in his head. _Hux, fourth stance!_

And he shifted. The blaster bolt ricocheted away with a whine, and he smiled to show all his teeth.

The second one took him low in the gut; the third, he tilted just enough to send it skittering to the left. But raising the blade so high, so quick – it was too much. It slipped too low. And the last bolt took him in the chest, throwing him back, the hilt falling from his hands. But it did not splutter out. When he turned his head, his body little else than an agonising scream of pain come from all directions, everything was red. Including Kylo’s face, now unfrozen for all his motionless body still held his roiling spirit trapped.

He was screaming. It might have been something like _don’t_ or _no_ or _you can’t_. But for his own part, Hux himself was cursing his father’s name – his _own_ name – when he died.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...um, well. Technically this is the last chapter...? There _will_ be an epilogue to follow, though I haven't actually written it yet; with that said, it SHOULD be a great deal shorter than the average chapter anyway, so I'm hoping it'll turn up in a few days. In the meantime, though...here it is. I live in terror of it being _terrible_ , but...a couple weeks back, I said to myself fuck this, I'm gonna FINISH IT, and here we are.
> 
> So, if you're still here, still reading: you are everything. Thank you so, so damn much. <3

A shifting sky stretched out above him: night, day, space, an endless stretch of _blue_. It was all of those things, and then it was in turn none of them. He was laid on his back – but he was also standing up straight, head tilted so that he could drink it all in with his eyes, and drown.

_I’m dead_.

“You’re not dead.”

He turned, and saw her: the figure of a woman, crowned by rich red hair with but the faintest hints of dawning silver. Any other detail failed to register; Hux could just barely focus on her basic shape, everything else little but blurred and pale. Raising one hand, passing it hard over aching eyes, did little to remedy the situation.

“Who are you?” he asked, instead, not entirely expecting an answer. It came quick and clipped all the same.

“I’m Mara Jade.”

The name twisted low in his abdomen – twisted in this _reality_ , because now when he blinked she began to resolve into something more obvious, and something far truer. Her face was constructed of features both strong and fine, the pale skin faintly freckled in patterns of stardust. The narrow eyes were very green, almost preternaturally in their bold colour. But for all she was nothing if not a stranger, he felt an odd familiarity in the tilt of her head, the easy knowing of her unblinking expression.

“You’re Rey’s mother.”

“I am.”

Hux tried to sit up, failed miserably, and tried to remember if he’d been standing two seconds ago. “This is that Force place,” he said, and didn’t bother to mask his scowl. When he looked to Mara again, he found he now looked down at her – and he could only suppose he had been standing all along.

“Yes,” she replied, utterly unmoved by his crisis with his personal orientation in space. “Rey spoke with you here.”

That had him narrowing his own eyes. “You know about that?”

“I’m the one who encouraged her to do it.” The words were light, though far from easy; her gaze remained penetrating, searching. It reminded him of nothing so much as the specialist service soldiers he’d but rarely seen as a child. “Not that she knew about it, as such. But I pushed her in the right direction.”

He let this lie, a moment, turning it over in his thoughts; a moment later, he was no less confused. “Why would you do that?” he asked, finally, and pressed his lips tight together. “…if you could tell her these things, you must have known where she was in the first place.”

“Oh, yes, I know exactly where she is.” Again, that unblinking, unflinching stare. “I’m the one guarding her.”

“What?”

Her shrug was a fluid, simple thing. “If you want to kidnap a Force-sensitive – even one who’s a mostly untrained child – then you need a specialist.” Tilting her head, the long hair shifted with it like a braided rope of molten crimson. “I can be such a specialist.”

His head hurt. Being dead had been complication enough. “…you helped Snoke kidnap your own child?” Then, as if it even mattered, anymore: “Wait. Isn’t _Snoke_ Force-sensitive?”

“Not in the way you’d think,” she replied with that same ease of a commander at debrief; the clear distaste that crossed her face, however, was something entirely new. “He’s…rather _unique_ a creature, shall we say. But he’s not able to connect with the Force the way we do.” She must have seen something in his expression that spoke of his frustrated lack of understanding; to her credit, she scoffed only a little. “He influences it. But he can’t control it. Hence why he needs us.”

Taking a deep breath probably didn’t count for much, considering he’d likely collapsed his real lungs with a blaster bolt, but Hux did it anyway. “And you’re working with him,” he hazarded, though he didn’t bother to mask the rising fury that accompanied it.

Mara still only watched, impassive and easy in a stance that he had no doubt could turn killing in a moment. “Theoretically.”

Closing his eyes didn’t make much difference; he could still see stars moving, even in the dark. Opening them again, he instead looked more closely at her. She wore clothing both close-fitting and thick, fit for somebody who used her body as a weapon and wished no restraint. There _were_ plenty of weapons about her person, and he suspected those he could see were but a fraction of what she actually carried. But the height, the shape—

“You were the woman with my father,” he said, and didn’t bother to hide the true fury of it. “That’s why Kylo couldn’t do anything. Because _you_ were stopping him. With the Force.”

His anger moved her not at all. “Very good.”

Instinct told him to go over there, to close his hands around her throat and throttle the truth from her. Sense told him there wasn’t the slightest point in doing so. And yet, all he could think of was Kylo, helpless as he died. Rey, in the hands of Snoke—

“Is this a test?” he asked, at last. And she turned, just a little; behind her, the world shifted to a veil of shimmering supernova.

“No,” she said, and then glanced back with one eyebrow arched high. “Unless you want it to be.”

“I’m sick of being tested.”

The words were more instinct than thought. In return her lips curled in something not quite a smile. “Good,” she said, and he still felt as if he’d been evaluated, somehow. “We’re beyond all that nonsense, here.”

Again his eyes moved reluctantly to the space around him; it had become something like the ocean, now, blue and shimmering and deeper than light could ever penetrate. “Because I’m dead.”

“You’re not listening to me.” When he frowned back over at her, she actually rolled her eyes. “Didn’t you hear what I said? You’re not dead.”

“Well, I’m obviously not _alive_ ,” he snapped, and raked a hand back through his hair. “I got shot through the heart. If I’m remembering correctly.”

“Yes, you are.” A pause, and then she added, with something dangerously close to humour, “More or less.”

“As far as I recall, you need a heart to live,” he said in sharp retort. “More or less.”

But any true back and forth seemed unlikely enough; already her expression had shifted again, growing harder. “It’s a bit more complicated than that right now,” she said, and Hux felt his hands tremble on the verge of fists.

“What have you done to Kylo?” he asked, strange and conversational. “Has he already been delivered to…to the Emperor?”

“No,” she said, and he heard a touch of impatience entering her words. “Again, it’s more complicated than that.” When she looked at him now, he felt her mind shift against his own, knew she tested him in some unspoken way for all she said that she would not. “Much as the Emperor would _prefer_ the simplicity of just taking what he wants, it’s necessary that Kylo _wishes_ to go with him.”

“What, is that some sort of metaphysical Force rule?”

A blink was the only obvious reaction she had to such incredulous question. “No,” she said, and her own tone turned lightly mocking. “He just doesn’t want to be married to someone who doesn’t worship him the way the first one did.”

That hurt. He smirked around the edges of it. “Fair point.”

Something like pity twisted her expression, now; she leaned back from him, just a little. “You actually believe I’m on their side, don’t you.”

“You just said you kidnapped your own daughter.”

“I _said_ they required certain skills in order to achieve their goals,” she replied with sharpening edge. “And that I fit their requirements in that regard.”

He might have been relieved, if the realisation didn’t also just make him furious. “You’re a double agent.”

“No,” she said, and for the first time true irritation coloured the words. “I’m a _free_ agent.” Again she tilted her head, and then she shook it. “Did Luke tell you nothing about me?”

It was next to impossible to tell if she was offended, but he supposed even if she was, it wasn’t as if it would make much difference to him in the end. “He said you had been Hand to the old Emperor,” and she nodded, though she didn’t seem pleased.

“And who is more obsessed with the old Empire, than Snoke and the First Order?”

Closing his eyes, he remembered again the world he had known: the endless rows of grey-clad youth, straight-backed and sharp in their forward stare, waiting for orders from the new Order. “Do they not realise you’ve been fucking the poster boy of the Rebellion that exiled them all?” he asked, opening them again, and the woman actually snorted.

“They had some _inkling_ of it, shall we say.” There was not the slightest shame or coyness to the words when she added, “I’m sure you yourself are familiar not only with relationships of convenience, but also with outright hate-fucking.”

The images conjured by this statement – of the Knight and the General, twisted and torn together in the _Finalizer_ ’s medbay – turned his stomach, had him wincing until he pursed his lips, looked evenly at this peculiar woman before him.

“Do they know she’s yours?”

She spoke with utter certainty, which he could not help but envy her. “They have no idea. They don’t even know for sure that she’s Luke’s.” His raised eyebrow had her rolling her own eyes. “Oh, they know the rumours, I suppose. But I masked her from me.” Now she turned sly, almost conspiratorial. “And Anakin Skywalker didn’t even have a father, if you recall.”

“It’s a bit different, when there’s a _mother_ to grow the child,” he said, obeying the inbred instinct towards constant debate; it seemed she had something similar, when she immediately answered back.

“You know as well as anyone else that cloning technology renders all of that moot, in the right hands.”

Now he didn’t bother to hide how disbelieving all of this left him. “Are you saying you spread rumours that Rey is – what, Luke Skywalker’s _clone_?”

“Perhaps even Anakin’s,” she said, too light, and his eyes widened.

“You didn’t.”

On anyone else, her faint amusement would have been an outright smirk. “Why not?”

She’d already told him more than once he wasn’t dead. For the first time, he was beginning to wish he was. “I would say you’re insane,” he said, conversationally so, “but you fucked a Skywalker. So even if you weren’t to begin with, it’s obviously catching.”

But the banter slid by her, her expression once more as neutral as her words. “You’re as much a part of this as any of the rest of us.”

“Am I?” He let the bitterness flow, thick and hateful as bile. “They only set this up to use me as bait. To lure Kylo here. They didn’t even need to keep me alive once he _was_ , if my father’s latest stunt is anything to go by.”

She wore her disgust as openly as the saber hilt at her hip. “Your father has no vision,” she said, eyes fixed upon his own. “Your father, to be frank, doesn’t know anything.” But they turned strange, now; somehow darker, somehow deeper. “He doesn’t even know your name.”

“My name is Brendol Hux Jr,” he said, more by reflex than any real desire towards ownership. And Mara shook her head, fingertips now shifting in light circle over the saber’s end.

“Your name is Armitage.”

Even the shifting impossible reality around him now seemed to grind to a halt. “What?”

“Armitage.” Mara had actually managed patience, but the wickedness to her slight smile quite ruined any comfort one could conceivably take from it. “That is your real name.”

“ _What_.”

Now she appeared to take pity on him, giving the information he’d never asked for with free ease. “Your mother. Joni Gillen. She actually named you Armitage Hux.” The scorn returned, and somewhere in the twisting hurricane of his thoughts he wondered what Brendol Hux had ever done to this woman to make her loathe him so. “But of course your father never approved. Hence why he never told you.”

There were many things his father had never said, and this was hardly the worst of them. But still, his mind rebelled at every syllable. “I… _Armitage_?” He’d always thought his life a joke, but his laughter choked him now. “Are you _serious_?”

“It could be worse,” she said, her own amusement now entirely vanished. “It could be _his_.”

He closed his eyes. “If it’s all the same to you, I think I’m going to stick with Hux.”

“Suit yourself.” When he looked back to her, she’d folded her arms over her chest again, had walked perhaps ten feet away; there was a delineated edge beneath her boots, as if she stood at the very edge of everything. “I will warn you, however, that Rey’s going to call you Armie. And I won’t stop her.”

The heels of his hands dug into aching eye sockets. “Has my own life _ever_ actually belonged to me?” he demanded, hunched over as he was. “I mean, at _all_?”

“It depends on how you look at it.” And when he looked to her now she stood silhouetted against what was a burning binary sunset, pitiless and pure. “I’ve met plenty of Force users in my life who give themselves utterly to its will, as if they never had any of their own. And then there are those who live in tune with it.” She stepped back to him now, quick-footed and sure, her eyes abruptly as encompassing as Kylo’s own. “They have their own path, but they also realise their life is but one stream of many, all leading to the same ocean in the end.”

He glanced away, found his teeth had worked his lower lip almost to ragged ruin. “That sounds very spiritual,” he muttered, and heard her snort.

“It’s not necessarily my own view.” She paused, thoughtful. “But there’s enough truth in there, that I can live with it.”

The world around him had changed, again; his stomach rolled in faint nausea to see it, for all it had become now something rather lovely: beaches of white sand, surrounded by interlocking lagoons of the bluest water Hux had ever not really seen. His bitterness, as always, came as easily as night to day. “But you’re one these… _people_.” An eyebrow, raised, was her only answer; his anger pulsed through his veins, again, hot and heavy. “You _have_ the Force. You can effect change. I’m…I’m just a cog in a machine.”

“You’ve never been _just_ anything, Hux.” Again, irritation entered her tone, the world behind them both shifting to something crimson and furious, all heat and very little light. “And after seeing yourself as _Emperor of the Known Galaxy_ , how could you think the _Force_ is the only thing that could make a person worthy or relevant?”

He had to look away from the frank power of her gaze. “He had Kylo.”

“Synergism can be an important tool,” she replied, “but then, so is raw potential.” The weight of one bare hand fell heavy upon his shoulder; glancing over Hux found Mara had stolen close to his side, her fingers tightening further.

“With all that said, I’m not here to act as your therapist. You still have work to do. Are you going to do it, or not?”

He didn’t shake off her touch. “One question.”

“Yes?”

“This plan – it necessitated allowing Rey to fall into Snoke’s hands, I’m assuming?” The nod was military sharp. He had to admire that, even as the situation itself seemed to get worse by the second. “Because…this is the only way you could get close enough to him, with enough power, to destroy him?”

“Yes.”

“…and Skywalker just _let_ you put his daughter in danger like that?”

At first, she appeared genuinely surprise. And then, she actually _laughed_ – for all the sound seemed unpractised, raw around its edges. “Well, let’s be practical – Luke would never have agreed to any of this.” The fondness in her expression could only be fleeting, but it also could not be ignored. “I don’t doubt we _could_ have done it his way. But this was simpler.”

“Messier.”

“Quicker,” she corrected, lips slanted in something that might have been a smirk. “But yes, Luke is completely unaware of this plan.”

He’d known so very little of the man – but he recalled the tea in his hands, the deft quick movements of the man before him. “He’s not going to be impressed.”

“But he better be damn grateful.” She tossed her head, and her hair flowed loose now, like a fire lit and unleashed. “He’s already saved the galaxy himself one too many times. He needs to let other people have the chance.”

“Like his nephew.”

She just shrugged. “They’re Skywalkers. They’re more or less genetically obligated to do it at least _once_. He’ll understand.”

He recognised this shift, now: the world around him had become grey Arkanis, stormy and uncertain. The taste of rain against his lips felt almost like a benediction. “I think I’d prefer to be dead.”

“Don’t joke about that, Hux.” When he looked back to her, he found her untouched, unquenched by the rain that fell over them both. “Because I meant it, you realise? I’m not here to baby you through your daddy issues, or stroke your ego. You’re here because you have a part to play, and it’s part of my role to get you where you need to be to do it.” Now she turned hard. “I can do it without you. In the end, it doesn’t really matter to _me_ whether you do it or not.” A pause, and then: “But it matters to him.”

The raindrops coursed over his cheeks in the paths of tears unshed. “Kylo.”

“I’ve been trying to keep that kid out of the mire of darkness since he was three years old.” She actually reached forward, poked him hard in the chest. “If you fuck it up for me now, you’d better _wish_ you were dead.”

He rebalanced himself with difficulty, frowned. “Why does it matter, to you?”

“Because there is Light. And then there is Dark. And then – there is _living_.” Her green eyes were everything, even as Hux could only think of those deep, and so much darker. “And that’s the balance, Hux. Between all of it.”

“All right.” Defeated, he could only offer himself up for one more battle. “What is it you need me to do?”

 

*****

 

_This is the dreamworld, again; Hux would groan to see it, but it’s startling enough that at first all he can do is stare in silence. It’s a pastoral scene, and one he recognises – though not from any memory of his own. No, he’d seen this in Leia Organa’s Coruscanti home: the rolling green hills, lying low before the sudden rise of snow-covered mountain behind. The smooth curves of the city lie before him in silver towers, each speckled with lights like fireflies in patterns of dance. Above, the sky is pastel-struck pink and dusk is falling, but: there is no fear, in this dark. There is only comfort, the promise of easy sleep, of a warm bed, of a world worth waking up to._

_“This isn’t my dream,” he says through numb lips, and he cannot look away._

_“No.” If Mara had known how to work an apology, he supposes he might have heard it in her words then. “No, it’s his.”_

_“Kylo,” he says, and it’s more a sigh than an actual word. Turning away from the view of the sky, where silver stars have only just begun to pierce its veil, is harder than it has any right to be. “I suppose he’s here, somewhere?”_

_“Well, that is the point of us being here.” Crossing her arms over her chest, Mara nods, somewhere towards the sky. “I nudged him over this way, from the real world. He’s unconscious, at this point.”_

_He winces to hear it, though it’s not unexpected – or even inadvisable, considering that Kylo’s already gone careening across the galaxy to rescue his cousin and a man he barely knows. It does not help that Kylo had had at least some idea of exactly the kind of creature he’d been running towards, too; the image of Kylo, tangled in his own agony upon his bed on Yavin 4, will never leave Hux alone._

_Though he moves back from the balcony’s edge, the movement actually gives Hux a better view of the building in which they stand. It is a castle before them – he knows that, because he recognises it. But given the age at which he’d been when it had been destroyed, Hux has only ever known Alderaan from history: with the exiles, he had seen it as the frank victory of the Death Star at full power. In Coruscant, it had been the war crime that turned the tide of resistance against a totalitarian dictator._

_But then, he’d also seen it through the eyes of one of its last ambassadors._

_“What is_ this _?” he asks, and he knows Mara will hear the nuance of the question, even as he himself chokes on it._

_“It’s his…” A low cough, and he wonders exactly what she is masking. “For lack of a better descriptor, we’ll call it his ‘happy place.’ We all have it. A place where we imagine we’d be most content. Where we belong, always.”_

_There are figures, moving about the courtyards and gardens below; the scents that float up to him are sweet and easy, the last notes of the flowers as they close their petals in upon the symphonies of the day. “He doesn’t seem to know a lot about being happy,” he says, not entirely meaning it aloud; for her own part, Mara’s answer is quieter still._

_“Few people do.”_

_“Including you?”_

_Though he’s turned to her, he can’t help but think it was foolish to confide in a woman such as this. But she only watches him in return, and her reply is easy if not light. “Take a look at what I’m doing right now,” she says, “draw your own conclusions,” and then she waves one hand in casual dismissal, a gesture like a blade across the throat. “Then, you can keep them to yourself.”_

_Hux looks back again to the view before him; the sky is growing taking on a deeper hue, blue deepening to rich purple. Only the brightest of stars have revealed themselves, yet. “Can he see me here, then?”_

_“If you force him to.” At his raised eyebrow, she gives a faint smirk. “If you’ll forgive the pun.”_

_It troubles him, and though he’d prefer to keep such feelings of inadequacy entirely to himself, he still asks her anyway. “Am I not here already?”_

_“Yes.” Leaning back against the balustrade, legs crossed lightly at the ankle, she gives him a considering look. “But you’re not joined at the hip. We can find him without you.”_

_The urge to do so is striking, deep – like the need for a heartbeat, or to take one breath after another. “What is it that you want me to do here?”_

_Her face is as a mask. “Tell him you love him.”_

_“What?”_

_“Tell him you love him,” she repeats, harder now. “And that you want him to do what’s right.”_

_“I –_ what _?” He shakes his head, as if it’s filled with sudden noise. “What difference is that going to make?”_

_“Trust me.”_

_Surely she knows the foolishness of such request, when Hux has never trusted even himself. “Why?”_

_“Because I told you to.”_

_This is a woman not used to being denied what she wants. And Hux looks up to the sky, again, and wonders at the worlds where he is the same. Where he has lived a life that promised him everything he always wanted._

_He looks back. “But this is his fantasy world,” he says. “What difference would it make? Surely I tell him that all the time anyway.”_

_“Hux,” she says, but she’s moving back, into the thin shade of darkness beneath the high eaves. But Hux does not ask where she goes. Already he can feel what he does not see. And when he turns, there he is: emerging from the light glow of the chamber within, a tall broad figure, wild dark hair like a corona of dark matter about his curious features._

_“Hux,” he says, and he forgets all words but one._

_“Kylo.”_

_He steps so close, that Hux can scent him: sharp musk, and something like the forest after rain. A moment passed and Kylo tilts his head, dark eyes suddenly very curious – and Hux feels the faintest hint of alarm, for all Mara remains so still, apparently beyond Kylo’s reach._

_“You look…different, somehow,” he says, and his own reply is too quick, and so ridiculous._

_“New haircut.”_

_He can hear Mara, snorting in the background. Even as he ignores her, Kylo seems not to hear it all. “What are you looking at out here?” he asks, instead, and Hux swallows hard._

_“The sky.” He raises a hand, lets it fall. “It’s a cliché. I know.”_

_“Hux,” he says, faintly amused – and he loses all thought. Here, Kylo is young, still – but not so young as the Kylo that Hux has come to know. While nowhere near the age of the hound, he is also younger still than the knight. He’s somewhere in between, liminal and lovely, and all Hux wants to do is take him for his own._

_Kylo tilts his head, again. “Hux. You’re staring.”_

_“You’re beautiful.”_

_“I—” He pauses, and his startled expression might have been amusing, in another reality. But Hux, here, can only look at what he has lost. Kylo must see something of it, clearing his throat with considerable difficulty; his cheeks have taken on a low flush. “Well. You’re in a good mood, tonight.” And then, with the levity not quite forced, “Did my Dad slip you some spice, or something?”_

_His words crack like a whip. “Your father’s here?”_

_Puzzled, Kylo tilts his head, even as Hux regrets the reflex of his question. “Why wouldn’t he be?”_

_“I don’t know.” It hurts, somehow. To think that Han Solo really does love his son, for all the misunderstandings of their relationship. Hux does not think he could say the same for Brendol Hux. Even had their lives been entirely different, he would always have been a disappointment to that man._

_“Hux.” The hands are warm on his shoulders, and the breath upon his cheek warmer still. “What’s wrong?”_

_The concern in those words – the ease of them, too. Both of these things should hurt, and yet Hux wants nothing else. “I love you,” he says, and he means every word._

_Before him, but a moment away, Kylo is struck into silence. The dark eyes shimmer with some light Hux does not think comes from the low gleam of the lamps, or the birthing stars above._

_When he speaks, it comes as barely more than a whisper. “And you think that’s wrong?”_

_“No.” His face is oddly soft between his hands, as if he might shape it whatever way might please him most. But then, he’s always been so expressive, that strange mismatched series of features that makes up something that could never be anything else but Kylo._

_“No,” he repeats. “It’s wrong that I don’t tell you. Every day.”_

_“Hux,” Kylo begins, and Hux presses tighter, shaking his own head even as he never lets their eyes part. He doesn’t know if this is actually what Mara wanted. He doesn’t think this is what giving oneself over to the Force actually feels like. But he says these words, all the same, because they are his own and they are in his mouth and there is nothing more he can do._

_“And you know what’s right,” he demands, and shakes him, just a little. “Don’t you?”_

_Kylo does not move away, looks to him as if he is the only thing left in the universe. “Hux, what’s_ wrong _?”_

_“You know what’s right,” he repeats, fiercer. Before Kylo can say something – right, wrong, neither – Hux crushes their lips together. It’s as much a distraction as it is emphasis on the words themselves – and Kylo responds with willing heat, a fierceness of purpose that for a moment curdles Hux’s blood in sudden fear._

_And then he gives himself over, and it doesn’t matter. Kylo is with him, around him, within him – and when he draws back, desperate for oxygen, he thinks he could learn to live without it, for this._

_And Kylo looks back to him, eyes dilated, black and shining with stars. “Shall we take this inside?” he whispers; aching, yearning, Hux wants nothing more. He remembers it: every moment, of the knight and his general. Of the emperor and his hound. And he wants nothing so much as to know it for himself._

_“Yes,” he murmurs, and traces fingertips over the left side of Kylo’s face: from the centre of his forehead, over the bridge of his nose, the soft skin of one cheek. And when he finds the pulse, quicksilver beat between throat and jaw, there he pauses. “But give me a moment.”_

_“Why?” With their bodies pressed close together, from hips to where their lips move against skin, Hux knows the hardness of him, of himself. And Kylo shifts his hips, steals a gasp from Hux’s opened mouth. “I never want to let you go,” he whispers, and Hux wants nothing more than to stay._

_“Just for a minute,” he says, and presses him back. “Go on. I’ll be right in.”_

_There’s still confusion there, somewhere – but the trust, that’s what feels like a twisted saber, pushed through his heart. “You had better be.”_

_When he turns blindly to the balcony’s edge, looks up to the stars – it doesn’t matter how many of them are there, now. He’s alone, and the misery of it suffocates him, choking his throat to silence. Even when Mara steps from the shadows, he cannot bear to look to her._

_“Good,” she says, low, simple. And he turns, voice rising, hands bunched at his sides._

_“Good?_ Good _?!” And he presses those fists to his eyes, feels the explosion of silver in the dark. “This is madness,” he moans, and abruptly wishes that when he opens his eyes, he will find himself back on Coruscant. That he will look around and see he has inexplicably fallen asleep at a meeting with the senator, that he has humiliated himself in the service of a government he had not been born to the beliefs of, but: he will be_ home _._

_And he opens his eyes in the dream not his own, and knows that home is a luxury he’s never been able to afford. “I can’t believe you would willingly set this up,” he says, flat, utterly dry-eyed. And Mara nods, as if she had followed every mad thought of but a moment before._

_“Did you know,” she says, very low, “in the universe of the general and the knight Kylo Ren,” and here, her voice takes on sharp virulent tang, “that Rey was abandoned on Jakku as a child? Left to fend for herself as an orphan, with no memory of her family and no knowledge of her power?”_

_He can only stare. “Why would you do that?”_

_She laughs, cold and bitter. “It wasn’t my choice. I wasn’t there to make it.” And she shakes her head, looks to the Alderaanian sky – one that exists nowhere else but in the memories of those who had known it, and those that they love still. “They did it to keep her away from Snoke,” she says, very soft. “Much good as it did any of them, in the end.”_

_“What_ is _Snoke?” he asks, and he knows what she will say._

_“It doesn’t matter.” She’s turning, walking away. “Come with me. There is still work to be done.”_

 

*****

 

He did not wake, but then: he was not sleeping, as it were. He instead went from the dream of Alderaan to walking at Mara’s side. He supposed he could have asked exactly what she had done to him, with his apparent death – but the only thing that seemed immediately relevant was that on her other side walked Kylo. Shackled and furious, he stared only at her, and straight through Hux himself, as though he had never been there at all.

“You’re her _mother_!” he was hissing, eyes ablaze in his too-pale features, though his cheeks burned with high colour. “How could you _do_ this to her?”

Mara did not look at him once; though she touched him not at all, the odd angle at which Kylo walked seemed to suggest she was pulling him along with the aid of the Force. “Be quiet.”

“If you’ve hurt her,” he said, low pulsing promise, like a slashed artery on the verge of eruption, “I will _end_ you.”

To that, she gave no reply at all, though neither did she increase their pace. Kylo still appeared to be pulling backward, dragging his feet; his next question was different. His assertions about Rey had lacked no certainty, had meant every inch of their violent promise. This, instead, had turned vulnerable.

“And where did they take Hux?”

Again, Mara gave him only silence.

“Answer me!”

Even as his shout reverberated down the corridors, far too strong for human vocal chords for all Hux knew Mara still had to be suppressing him somehow, she did not look back. Instead she turned a sharp corner, and pulled them both to a halt. Two tall doors stood closed at her back, their patterns deeply etched into thick dark wood. They looked as innocuous and innocent as the rest of Visdic itself. But with Mara Jade in silhouette before them, eyes level and expressionless, they could have been guarding the gates to hell itself.

“You can see him, if you like,” she said, without the faintest hint of reassurance. “He’s just in here.”

It was almost possible to _hear_ something in him break, anew; the broad shoulders sagged, his lips white and pressed tight together. Whatever the chamber was, beyond those doors, Kylo could not be fool enough to believe it a medical unit. “They wouldn’t let him die,” he whispered, and Hux wanted nothing so much as to reach out between them, to lift the veil of death and touch _life_ , again.

“Come,” Mara said, though she waited for no assent, and certainly not his cooperation. As it turned out, she needed to coerce neither; paying no heed to the doors that closed shut with ominous finality at his back, Kylo stood in the middle of a windowless, rounded chamber, and looked around in quick demand.

“He’s not here.”

The harshness of his tone, of his expression, moved Mara not. “Kylo,” she began, but never finished; his voice rose to a shout, and the entire chamber shuddered with the force of his demand.

“ _Where is Hux_?”

But he had already answered his own question. The gurney was a small thing, barely noticeable in its place up against the shadowed edges of the chamber. At first, Kylo baulked. A moment, and his face set, harder than even the helmet worn by the knight in another world entire. Stalking across to the gurney, he faltered again at the very last. The shrouded form moved not at all, even when Kylo snatched out, dragged the plain whiteness of the fabric away from the form beneath.

Hux mimicked Kylo’s own silence, staring down at his lifeless body. They hadn’t redressed him – in fact, it seemed they’d done nothing at all, the clothes singed and bloodied and torn. They hadn’t even closed his eyes; the corneas lay clouded and sightless above the grimace he’d died with, mouth hanging open, leaving him utterly without dignity even in death.

He supposed it had been necessary. Mara had apparently wanted to shove him out of his own body, though she still held him here in the Force. But as he looked at the ruin of himself, he didn’t feel any particular inclination to thank her for her efforts.

“I’ll kill all of you.”

He stirred, turned to him, even though Kylo could not see him. But Mara shifted not at all beneath the fury of his gaze, and kept her silence. It was a different voice entirely that came next.

“Kylo.” It held only the faintest pity; as it went on, it turned knowing, and then merciless. “You don’t have to do that.”

Very still, now, Kylo’s eyes shuddered to a close; his chest moved in sudden hitching breath, once, twice, three times before it settled again to calm. Hux, himself, felt dread move like ice through his veins.; it was as if night had chosen to fall in this place, but they all knew there would be no dawn to follow. When they turned, it was unintended, but still it was together.

He stood unnaturally tall, and far too thin, darkly robed though he was. It gave the clear impression, momentary though it was, of the Emperor Palpatine. But that man had always been cowled in all the years of his rule. In his journey from senator to Sith to emperor of the known galaxy, the man had suffered some disfigurement, one never truly known to those he ruled with absolute power.

But this creature wore it unfettered, and unhidden. The bald skin pulled taut over the rounded skull beneath was both pale and pock-marked, with one side further disfigured by deeper scarring. The dark, dark eyes held a knowing that somehow spoke of the horror of him, squirming under his skin.

“Snoke.”

He glided closer, as if there were no humanoid feet beneath the sway of that black fabric. “Yes,” he said, and his expression seemed to cave in upon itself; it might have been amusement, in another species. “I would prefer _Master_ , but considering the circumstances, perhaps we will not bother with that after all.”

With back held taut, Kylo held also his ground, even as Snoke came closer yet. “You are not my master,” he said, though the difference in their height forced him to look up; Snoke, perhaps seven and a half feet in height, looked down with the resigned pity of a god evaluating his most recent, most failed creation.

“I should have been.” One hand rose, skeletal fingers shifting in dismissal. “But no matter. That time has passed.”

Kylo’s own hand moved towards his belt, though the hilt of his saber no longer hung there. His eyes remained fixed upon Snoke alone. “So you’re just going to take my cousin instead?”

“She is…extraordinary. And yet, so _unknown_.” By now he loomed over Kylo like some monster from beneath a child’s bed, peculiar face curved in the strangest lines of falsified regret. “But you, Ben Organa Solo…your birth. Everybody knew of it. The _universe_ knew of it. I sensed you, from the very moment of your creation.”

He stared up. “And you wanted me.” Even as his face, his body, his very _being_ displayed clear repulsion, Kylo leaned closer, drawn inexplicably nearer. “Right from the very beginning.”

“I thought you unique.” Now Snoke leaned back again, hands folded into his sleeves, quite content in his work. “How wonderful, that there is now another.”

Any fascination he might have had with the creature evaporated in one heated second. “And you can’t have her.”

“What are you going to do, offer yourself instead?” Clear ridicule coloured every word. “I don’t want you, now.”

Hux could imagine the way nails would dig into palms, given the white-knuckled bunching of both hands at Kylo’s side. But he stood very still, and very tall, even his expressive features not wavering even the slightest bit. “Rey will never turn to the dark,” he said, cold, clear. “But we all know that I could. That I _have_.”

Hux closed his eyes, felt a shiver skip down his spine, the lightning strike of sudden inexplicable arousal. But Snoke’s own reply brought reality crashing swiftly back. “Rey is a child.” His delight could not be ignored. “She has much yet to learn.”

He took one step forward, voice like an avalanche. “She will never be yours!”

And Snoke remained unimpressed, his headshake small, unconcerned. “I have no use for you.”

He knew all too well how to injure him deepest. With head bowed, now, Hux could only watch as Kylo struggled for calm, every breath taken deep, forced, too slow. When he looked up, his eyes were dead black stars. “Then what I am even _doing_ here?” he said, the sudden hatred of those words crackling like electric storm upon the air. “You didn’t need me to get her!” His lips twisted, sudden dark glee in his eyes. “Or is it that you fear me? What I would do, if you took her away?”

The low laughter, pitying and soft, was worth far more in damage than anger could ever have been; stricken, staggering back half a step, Kylo was left with the expression of a child told just how unwanted he had always been. “Kylo,” Snoke said, almost gentle, almost compassionate, “the man you thought you loved is dead.”

It shuddered through him like a death blow. “I should kill you for that alone.”

“But you won’t.” So easy, so confident, Snoke went ever on. “Because you can still have him.”

“…what?”

The whispered word had him turning, raising one hand with fingers trailing. “Come.”

The shift hit all of them hard – save for Mara and for Snoke himself. Hux found himself on his knees, head already aching, cursing the Force with every shaking breath. This was, again, the _other_ world: and he realised, for the first time, that it had a name, though he had no idea how he’d come to know it.

_This is the living Force_.

Kylo had recoiled, though unlike Hux, he had only gone down to one knee, left hand braced hard against the shifting ground; even in his robes, Hux could taste the bitterness of straining muscle, the salt of new sweat. And then he tasted blood upon his tongue as Snoke came before him. The ugliness of it was as fever, hot and furious and blinding: this was the way the creature had always wanted it to be. And Hux wanted nothing more in that moment than to go to him, to force him upwards, to show him how to stand up to those worth nothing of what he had the true potential to become.

Kylo’s head shot up, eyes wide, staring. “I can feel him,” he whispered. “Hux. He’s _here_.”

Fear rippled through him then, even with Mara at his side. Hux did not have the Force. He did not want to be _seen_ , not here. Not when he had no control, no influence, no real _power—_

His own voice rang out through the air, rich in command, almost kind in its invitation. “Yes, Kylo,” he said. “I am here.”

Hux staggered back half a step before he caught himself; the bitter gift of a decade in the Order’s ranks, a child taught to mask everything that he couldn’t fake. It made no difference; still he came, striding forward in relentless pace, this impossible figure in an impossible place. Tall, slim, all in white and gold, he came to a halt before Kylo, bent his crimson head.

Staring upward, again, Kylo had now gone to both knees. “Who are you?”

And he himself went to one knee before him, eyes locked upon Kylo alone. One hand, ungloved, bridged the space between them, fingertips soft upon one cheek. When he smiled, it was as the sun burning bright in the blue-green of his eyes.

“I am everything you could ever want, or need.”

“…Hux?”

He shook his head – just a little. Just enough. “Your Hux is dead.” Even as the skin upon Kylo’s face paled impossibly further, Hux raised his other hand, cradled his face between both palms now. “But then, so is my Kylo.”

“I – what?”

Unblinking, he never once looked away. “I am not from this reality.”

“…like the general.”

“Like the general,” he replied, perfectly amiable, absolutely agreeable. Watching the slow circle of one thumb above the arch of one cheekbone left Hux nauseous, cold. Only the still watchfulness of Mara at his side kept his there, even as every inch of him screamed out to push the two apart.

“We’ve both lost our other halves, Kylo,” the emperor went on, far too close now. “But we can fix that.”

Though Kylo was the scion of a family of ancient magic, it seemed he had fallen so easily beneath the spell of one utterly without the same; staring up at the emperor, eyes in hypnotic trance, he swallowed hard. “You want me to come with you.”

“The veil between realities is…thin.” His lips curled in a frown, now: the expression of one not used to being denied everything that he had ever wanted. “I can’t cross it, myself. I _can_ project myself here, thanks to what I have been taught.” Now he smiled, strange and light. “But you could come to me.”

And yet, that was not what Kylo focused upon. “What you’ve been taught.” The words were an echo, slow, almost stilted, eyes turned downward between the crease of his brow. Then they flared, bright and burning as he looked up again. “ _Your_ Kylo taught you that.”

He appeared unmoved. But Hux knew enough of himself to see the flinch of agony behind his even gaze. “He did.”

“And then he died.”

This time, even Kylo himself had to see the flicker of genuine despair that crossed the emperor’s fine-boned features. “Yes.”

“How did he die?”

“Emperor.” Snoke’s voice reverberated with faint boredom, clearer impatience. “How long will this take?”

The cool eyes flicked up – when they met Snoke’s own, they remained steady and cold. But even Snoke himself could not have failed to note the slow rising in their depths, a storm gathering upon near horizon. “None of this would have been possible without my co-operation.” He spoke clipped, unforgiving, without care for any agenda but his own. “I think you’ll find I will take as long as I need.”

And Kylo’s words were sudden, the hurt of them undeniable. “You set this up between you.”

Still with his hands upon his face, the emperor looked back. “Yes,” he said, honest and without shame. In turn, Kylo pushed himself back, flowed fluidly to his feet. Even as his entire body seemed to vibrate with the fury of sudden betrayal, the emperor remained upon one knee, his upward look quizzical.

“What was the deal?” Kylo demanded, words as ugly as the sneer upon his face. “You give him Rey, and he gives you _me_?”

With a sigh, the emperor braced one hand upon his knee, pushed upwards. “Something to that effect,” he said, smoothing out his pristine regalia; for a moment, Kylo’s astonishment outweighed his anger.

“You really think I’d give up Rey for _you_?”

“Kylo.” He spoke so gentle, the words a soft compulsion. “Come with me, and you could have everything you ever wanted.” He had come so close, and Kylo did not even seem to notice it; so easily could that voice mesmerise. “I am the emperor. The galaxy is already ours.” Tender, now, he all but whispered, “there is no-one who would dare challenge our power.”

He blinked, and the words came out sharp, furious. “So how in the pfassking hell did I _die_?”

There was not the slightest indication, this time, of any hurt the emperor still felt over such loss. “My Kylo interfered with something he should have left alone.”

“And you don’t think you should have left _me_ alone?”

“Your majesty.”

Snoke’s words all but dripped with disdain. One royal hand moved up, halting all interruption, though the emperor never once looked away from Kylo himself. “Rey will have everything she could ever desire, here,” he said, the pronouncement like truth. “She will be happy.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head, as if trying to break free of some sort of hypnosis. “ _No_. She won’t.”

“ _Kylo_.” Again, one hand rested upon his face. Only Mara’s sudden crushing grip about Hux’s own wrist kept him from snarling, from stalking close, from taking in his hands what was truly his own.

Kylo did not move back. “Don’t touch me.”

Fingertips fluttered, light as butterfly kisses over the shiver of the skin beneath. “You need to think very hard about what you are turning away from,” he said, so soft. “This chance won’t come again.”

“I don’t care.”

“But you will.” The words hardened, even as his touch remained tender. “When you wake up, in the morning, and know that he is gone. When you look to your reflection, and see that his is not beside you.” Now he leaned close, the words a whisper against one oversized ear. “When you lay yourself down at night, and his hands never come, and you never again know his heartbeat in time with your own.”

His eyes wavered shut, face a mask of sudden indecisive agony, lips in faint quiver. “But we barely even knew each other.”

The answering chuckle held the easy cadence of victory. “As if that ever mattered to you.” Though they touched in only that one place, the palm against one cheek, to even Hux’s untrained gaze they seemed tangled – as if their very beings curled and curved around one another, never to be parted, irrevocably entwined.

“Come with me, Kylo, and I’ll show you everything you ever wanted to know.”

Upon the very razor-edge of such choice, Kylo wavered. “Why is this only once?” Something petulant crawled into the words, then, and sat stubbornly there. “Why can’t I choose this later?”

“Ah. Well.” Even though he pressed closer, a distance opened in his eyes, wide as the greatest of chasms. “The…passing…of the Hound disturbed the very fabric of the universe itself.”

Kylo actually snorted. “Because it’s an excellent idea to go around leaving tears in reality open to anything and anyone.”

With one shift of fingers, the emperor closed his hand about Kylo’s chin, jerked it to force him to look nowhere else but himself. “It will be closed soon enough,” he said, the hardness of earlier returning; he spoke with the assurance of a commander of armies, of armadas. “The sacrifice of another Force user will be enough energy to bind it back together. It’s part of the agreement.” With a thin smile, arched eyebrow, he added, “So that no-one… _reneges_ , on the deal, shall we say?”

His eyes widened. “Rey!”

“No, not _Rey_.” Irritated, now, he actually gave his face a little shake. “Don’t be too much of a fool, Kylo.” Casting a loathing glance aside, his eyes burned like lasers through the ever-watchful form but feet away from them both. “That is something _Snoke_ has arranged.”

“What do you mean?”

But the emperor had tired of such questions. “Go back to your reality,” he whispered, voice like rich caress even as he shifted up against the young man before him. Kylo’s eyes widened, then half-shuttered even as he took a trembling breath; the emperor smirked, came impossibly closer. “And then? You come to _me_.” The words curled over his skin in a breathless rush that had even Hux himself shuddering, the cool clear promise like stormrain in the desert. “ _Nothing else matters_.”

Snoke’s own faint curl of a lipless mouth belayed any observations of his own – and then, with a gasp, everything _shifted_ ; they were falling back, again, thrust into their true reality once more. It left Kylo again on his knees before Snoke. Gazing down from his higher ground, the sharp scorn burned like spilled magma.

“Well, Kylo.” Even in his clear disdain Snoke remained unmoved. “Have you made your choice?”

Immediately he found his feet, hand again clenching at the place his saber should have been. “You’re going to hurt her,” he growled, expression feral and strange; Snoke only lifted a naked eyebrow.

“Now why would I do that?” he said, and something that might have been laughter gurgled low in his unseen throat. “She is _everything_.” Now his voice rose, filling the space entire like a supernova blast. “And I have what I need to close the tear.”

A hand flicked out, sleeve dangling from the skeletal wrist. In almost immediate response some unseen door flickered open, birthing two disparate figures. Hux’s attention first dropped first to the smaller of the two: a boy, one probably not much older than Rey herself. Dressed in only a black bodysuit, dark skin whitened with fright, his darker eyes darted about the strangeness of the chamber. The resignation that lurked deeper still said much for his origins even before Hux looked sideways, and felt own skin chill to see who accompanied him. A sight not seen since his days in the starship academies: a Stormtrooper, faceless and straight-backed, stood at the boy’s side. One gauntleted hand remained closed tight about his upper arm, despite the fact the boy’s hands had been bound before him.

“A ‘trooper cadet,” Snoke said, expressionless even before such shivering fear. “An orphan, from one of the harvest worlds.” Even as he turned his gaze upon Kylo now, nothing in the gesture suggested that his opinion had ever meant anything to him. “We do actually pick up a surprising number of Force-sensitives, though most aren’t of any real interest. This one may be unusually strong, but he’s also completely untrained. Therefore, we have no particular use for him.” Something in the words, gravel-rough and harsh, turned contemplative. “Perhaps Rey will wish to train others when she is herself older, but he’ll be well beyond that age himself by then.” The dismissal came so easy, Snoke having never once looked at the boy himself. “He can make himself useful this way.”

Yet Kylo’s attention had already shifted elsewhere, his face twisted with crooked perplexed lines as he stared at the boy. Something in it felt to Hux like recognition, though they never could have met before. Despite his own father’s involvement in the ‘trooper programme, he was simply too young for even Hux to have known him.

“So.” Lazy, now, Snoke interrupted the thoughts of them both; even as the recipient of Kylo’s piercing gaze, he displayed no obvious emotion. “Will you go, then?” His lipless mouth curled, as if about an unvoiced laugh. “Or has the Emperor made a poor investment?”

Though Kylo’s own expression had been hard, in that moment it underwent seismic shift; though he wrested back under faint control, a long moment passed before he replied. “He gave you Rey,” he said, dull. “In exchange for _me_.”

“The human heart never does cease to astonish me, with its great capacity for foolish gestures.” One hand rose, waved in the direction of the ‘trooper and its charge. “I’ll close the tear between realities, either way. You can go, or you can stay.” He paused, his own voice turning darkly tender. “Though there’s nothing for you, here,” he said, soft as drowning. “Certainly I have no use of you.”

In the silence that followed, Hux could only hear the quick breathing of the terrified boy. Mara remained motionless at his side, though he knew there was no chance Kylo would see Hux now. Still he wanted to reach out. To hold him back. To _hold_ him.

Kylo’s voice rose to barely more than in a whisper, spoken to nothing and to nobody. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Wait.” Mara’s words rang out like a clarion bell. “Leader Snoke.”

Slow and steady as the pace of a glacier, he turned to her. Even as Hux flinched beneath the chill of a gaze that did not see him, she remained utterly at ease in the eye of such storm.

“Yes?”

“Perhaps it would help,” she said, and flicked a hand sideways, “if he could say goodbye to her first.”

Displeasure underwrote every word. “What do you mean?”

Two masked guards emerged from the same shadowed doorway that had admitted the ‘trooper and the boy. These were different, strange and hulking; they reminded Hux uncomfortably of the knight, his human face and voice masked by the confines of a silver-accented mask. But what mattered more was their charge: Rey, held between them, head lolling and feet dragging.

“What are you doing?” Snoke snapped, voice a whipcrack that stilled even Kylo’s reflexive movement towards his cousin. Mara only snorted, waved again; the two guards dropped her with unceremonious abruptness, leaving her in a crumpled heap even as they shifted back, returning to the shadows that had birthed them.

“You don’t want him to stay.” Not a hint of fear, nor of hesitation, tainted the strong lines of her body, the clipped ease of her words. “Even if you kill him, his spirit will remain here, in the Force. And he is strong.” Waiting not for any hint of approval, she turned again, gaze fixed upon her nephew. “Kylo,” she said, unforgiving as a lightsaber thrust through the heart. “Say your goodbyes. And then, go to the Emperor.”

He all but ignored her, already having chosen his path. “Rey,” he said, on his knees before where she lay upon the floor, hands upon her rounded shoulders. “Rey, wake _up_.”

“Whaaa…” The sound hmphed out of her, and she managed perhaps half a turn before thumping back down again, like a schoolchild refusing to be woken for her lessons. Wakefulness came to her a sudden second later; she sat bolt upright, hair a cloud around her head, eyes wide in the striking pale oval of her face. “…Benny?”

He smiled, soft, uncertain. “Hi.”

“ _Benny_!” Thrusting her arms about his neck, she pressed so close to him Hux wondered that either of them could breathe through it. But when she pulled back, both their eyes were red around their edges. “Where are we?” she said, and she turned – then, she stilled. “…that’s _Snoke_.”

“Yeah.” His voice had hardened like cool water to jagged ice. “Yeah, it is.”

She nodded, stern, unforgiving. “Let’s kill him.”

Hux felt his jaw fall to somewhere around his ankles. Snoke, for his own part, just shook his head. “Rey,” he said, cajoling, careful. As she looked back to him, her small gamin face set itself into the hard lines of a woman.

“What?”

“Your cousin is leaving,” he said, simple pronouncement. “And this galaxy will be yours alone.”

“What?” Her face scrunched up, clear disgust in every wrinkle. “I don’t want that.”

The bald horror of his head moved in a slow stroke of negation, dark eyes like windows to a world beyond even those already known. “But you will.” The rasping timbre of his voice held magnetic power, like flame to those who sought the light. “In time.”

But before she could reply, she scowled, turned back to where she was being set back down upon the ground, again. “Benny,” she demanded, “where are you going?”

He’d turned, eyes troubled. “I…”

The sudden burst of light vibrated through them all, fierce and fragile both; Hux winced, felt something prickle over his skin – like the sound of music turned to sensation. And when he turned to its source, he felt the bottom of his world fall out. In one corner of the room, a spectrum of colour had burst open like a blossoming flower; it was reality bleeding through reality, the impossible made terrifying in its very existence.

Rey, wide-eyed, could not look away. “It’s…it’s _beautiful_ ,” she whispered, and the terrible truth was that she was utterly right. Before her Snoke smiled, easy in his triumph.

“And this power is what you could have for yourself,” he all but crooned. “With the right teacher, of course.”

Only that broken her trance – and though her glance back to him held horror, the matching intrigue could not be denied. “What?”

But he was not even looking at her. “Kylo,” he said, hard, his sudden resemblance to Brendol Hux at his worst hit Hux like a blow to the gut. “It’s time for you to leave.”

A sudden scream had Hux turning – the ‘trooper had gone, though the boy remained. But it did not seem that would be true for long. Convulsing, now, his entire body seemed to burn with blue fire; impossible as it was, he seemed to be _dissociating_ , dissolving into the tear. Already Hux could see where it had begun to close at its edges.

Kylo’s entire body tightened in sudden panic, even as Rey’s hand closed around his wrist. “Benny!” Her fright seemed to shimmer through the air, as alive as the kaleidoscope horror of the tear itself. “ _No_!”

“But…” Kylo himself seemed torn between realities, anchored to this one only by Rey. His eyes drifted again and again to where the tear grew smaller by the moment. And then his eyes widened, and Hux saw what he saw: a tall figure, striding towards them, as if from within the tear itself.

“…Hux?”

He stepped free, dark and unmasked, his expression pure fury. “No.” But the hate was not turned upon Kylo – instead, he looked to one creature alone. “Hello, Snoke.”

“Who are you?” Rey whispered, somewhere between terror and delight. But he looked not to her – instead, the hound still looked to his goal alone.

Snoke had stilled in his shock. “You’re dead.”

The first time they had met, Hux had been struck by the fluid nature of Kylo’s features – of the way his mind had expressed itself through such wild mismatch. But the hound: there was no hesitation to his hate, no stammering indecision to his fury. “Not quite.” Though amusement shimmered through his voice, clear and unhalting, a darker promise echoed each step as he stalked closer. “Do you want to try again?”

Snoke’s answer struck out between them, like silent thunder; the reverberation of it seemed to set the air itself alight, sending Hux to his knees. Rey and Kylo followed, not far behind; her voice raised in wordless shout, halfway between fear and delight. This was not the Force. It was something more. Something _deeper_.

At last, Mara stirred to decisive movement; her hands closed about theirs, dragging them up. “Rey. Kylo.” Her voice was a shout, even over the silence. “This is it! You need to do it _now_!”

“Do _what_?” Rey blinked up at her, eyes wide and bewildered – but not afraid. There was no fear in her now. Her mother’s expression shimmered briefly between pride, and then dread. A moment later, Mara shook it all away, and nodded to where Snoke and the Hound had fallen still. Both were motionless, standing at what appeared to be frank ease – but the air between them _squirmed_ , alive with some strange unseen energy that twisted Hux’s stomach inside out, even as his mind begged him to turn away from what could surely only drive him to madness.

“The Hound can’t destroy him alone,” she said, low, urgent. “He needs Rey.” But her eyes turned to Kylo. “He’s always needed Rey. But he doesn’t have her, in his own reality. Not anymore.”

“What?” she asked again, and Mara looked to her – and for a moment, her confidence crumbled away, revealed the child she must once have been.

“You’re the balance,” she said, and her faith burned like holy fire. “Lend him your power. _Both_ of you.”

But Kylo, eyes locked upon the battle before them, only shook his head, expression twisted and suddenly vicious. “He doesn’t need _me_ , then.”

Her hand moved to her hip, and from her belt Mara took the distinct shape of Kylo’s cross-guarded saber. “You _are_ him,” she said, and her grin was that of a madwoman glad of her insanity. “Kylo.” As if by reflexive movement, the blade flashed to life in the grip of his right hand, brilliant and blinding. “ _Do it_.”

For the first time, Snoke turned from the impasse his actions had invited; the strain upon his face still could not hide the sneer that followed. Beneath it, for the first time Hux caught a glimpse of _teeth_ , long and white and oh so very _sharp_. “You’re a fool, Kylo,” he hissed, though the genuine fear beneath it only grew by the moment. “You could have had everything you ever wanted!”

“I already did.” With the blade held before him, his cousin firm by his side, Kylo took one step forward. And then another. And _another_. “And then you took it from me.”

“And you won’t get it from me, _ever_ ,” Rey hissed, and closed her hands over Kylo’s own.

Snoke howled, incoherent in his fury – but, unable to move from the assault held upon him by the hound, he had left himself utterly open to that of Kylo and Rey. The red-bladed saber drove straight into his chest, and – the world around them seemed to pull in upon itself, and then: _light_. Bright and dark and blazing all, _everything_. Covering his eyes, Hux felt the worlds _expand_ , and wondered if it counted as saving the galaxy, when it just ended up destroyed anyway all of a millisecond later.

The footsteps were resounding in the silence. For a moment he only shuddered, a child remembering the approach of a furious father. But when he glanced up, Hux turned very still. The Hound stalked towards him, tall and straight-backed, hands empty but never weaponless. Hux backed up, too slow – but then, there had never been anywhere for him to go.

And when the hound stopped before him, he barely croaked out the meaningless words. “You can see me.”

“Of course I can see you.” Indeed, he looked nowhere else. “I will always see you, no matter your form.”

“I…”

The generous lips curled with the faintest smile, oddly fond. “It should be impossible. I know that.” Tilting his head at this distance brought him so close Hux could scent his leather, the musk of hair and skin. His remarkable eyes, as always, promised him no escape even as the smile grew wider. “But then, I’ve always liked to prove the impossible wrong.”

“ _You_ wanted this,” he said, and he was so very tired of how endless these revelations had become. “It was always _you_.”

“Yes.” He turned, just slight, enough for his hateful gaze to drag violent over the place where the creature had been. “Because it’s one less Snoke, in all the worlds.”

His eyes slipped tightly closed. “ _That_ was how Mara knew. To do all this, I mean.” He wanted to laugh. He wanted to cry. Instead, he chose instead to glare at this impossible being who had crossed realities to get just what he wanted. “After what happened to Kylo as a kid, she started looking for a way to kill Snoke, I know that. But – she must have found out about you.” Skywalker had spoken of her drive, of her work – only in retrospect was everything was so simple, even when everything was so complicated. “She knew you had the same basic purpose. And so she aligned her goals with yours.”

His nod was simple, direct. “As an ally, Mara Jade is uniquely efficient.” A dark cloud crossed his face, then, quick and tempestuous. “In those realities where I might find her, at least.”

Hux’s own mind prickled, uncomfortable and sharp. “She’s not in all of them?”

“Things…change. From time to time, place to place.” The hound looked back to him, eyes returned to clear and present command. “And they cannot always end the way we might wish them to.”

For not the first time, Hux knew truly the despair and the disaster of the world of the general and his knight – of the inevitable nature of their ending. “But what about you?” Hux asked, hating himself even as he wished nothing more than to keep staring into those eyes forever. “Don’t you _miss_ him?”

This smile remained only faint, but truer than any other Hux had known of him. “Oh, he’ll keep looking for me. He never remembers failing, you see. He won’t remember this.” Again, he looked away, looked up to some distant sky Hux could never hope to share. “He’ll always come for me.”

It seemed a fool’s question. Hux asked it anyway. “Don’t you want to… _be_ , with him?”

“What we had…it could never be better.” His lip curled, eyes so very far away. “It was perfect. Just the way it was.”

Hux thought only a life lived in the ruins of promised potential, his chest a hard pulsing ache. “But how could you let that go?”

“I didn’t.” One hand rose, pressed against his left breast; Hux could not see it, but he _knew_ what lay beneath the armour. “I carry it with me, always,” he said, and Hux could feel the weight of it in his hands: entwined rings, crafted from the melted-down remnants of a general’s identification tags. “It’s what gives me the power to do this.”

“ _This_?”

“All of it.” He paused, then, when he spoke again, Hux wondered if he had learned such oratory from the emperor himself. “Snoke is a disease,” he said, every slow word spoken with utter clarity, “and I am its cure.” Now his eyes fixed upon Hux alone. “But I never would have known the point of it, if not for him.”

He stepped close before Hux could even consider retreat – as if there had ever been any place to escape from it. He didn’t even know that he wanted to try. The power of him held a distinct familiarity, alluring and inviting. He’d felt it from his own Kylo, back upon that day on Yavin 4 when Kylo had taught him something of the Force as he himself felt it to be. But this was still something different – something _more_. It had been tempered and perfected, given over in perfect trust to the power he sought out. Those dark eyes filled the worlds entire, rich with their flecks of gold like the scattered stars of another universe, afloat upon the vast plains of that remarkable mind.

Broad hands closed upon his face; he had scarcely time enough react to even that before the full lips pressed down upon his own. Hux did not kiss back, and not only for his surprise – they were seeking something. Not a reward, precisely. More: a _memory_. Something of the life he had known before. Something Hux could never hope to give him.

But when he drew back, the hound’s expression had turned hazy, soft. “Never let him go,” he said, barely a whisper. “Though I already know – you’d do anything. For me.” The hound turned, and Hux did not see him go. But: he was gone, and it left Hux completely alone.

The hands on his body came heavy, grasping. “Hux?” The desperate question spiralled upwards with sudden hysteria, demanding, unrelenting. “ _Hux_!”

Opening his eyes, he gasped for breath – then realised he could _feel_ it, burning in his chest. That he _had_ a chest, again. The gurney’s sharp edges pushed into his back, his shoulders; above him, a blur of black and white resolved into Kylo himself, bloodied and white-faced. Hux thought, fuzzily, that he now had a clear idea of what he had looked like as a child. Then: broad arms came around him, pulling him up, pulling him close.

“Kylo!” He gasped the name, and then again. “That _hurts_!”

It could come as no real surprise, that he only held him all the tighter. “Good!” With his face now buried in the ruin of his short, his words were scarcely more than a mess of muffled, wet sound. “That means you’re _alive_!”

From somewhere behind them both, an impatient sigh ruined what little dignity the scene had ever possessed. “He was never really dead, Kylo.”

“What?” That got his attention, turning, eyes too wide, Hux felt the air vibrate around them all, as if some unseen weapon screamed itself to full charge. “You _faked Hux’s death_?”

“For a good cause.”

“ _Hux_!” The small arms closed about his chest, so impossible and so strong; the action might have actually interrupted a scene of attempted murder. “You’re all right!”

He curved inward under the fresh assault, barely managed a full sentence around such manifestation of relief. “You’re strangling me.”

It seemed a family trait, that given such words, she only held on all the harder. “No, I’m not!”

It also seemed only natural, that it was not Kylo who stepped in. “All right, Rey,” came the even fluid tones of Mara Jade. “That’s enough.”

To Mara’s credit, Rey almost immediately let go. But for all her enthusiasm of but a moment before, she had turned almost shy, now; her fingers looped together before her hips, small body gone very still. “Hi.”

“Hello.” She paused, and her next words held an uncertainty Hux would have thought impossible of the woman. “We have a lot to talk about.”

Rey actually snorted, her smile wry and small. “No kidding.”

“But I need to talk to Hux and Kylo, for a minute.” Her voice gained strength now, and she nodded back towards where the tear had been. “You could go check on the kid.”

Though she immediately chanced a glance to said kid – who was both indeed still alive, but moving in such a way that that indicated he was considerable need of some attention – Rey looked back to Mara, again. “What, so it’s _adult_ stuff?” With arms akimbo, she actually looked about two seconds short of stamping her foot. “I just helped save absolutely _everyone_ , and you say I can’t hear the _adult stuff_?”

“Rey.” It was not a mother’s voice, not exactly. But the authority in it made even the request that followed sound more of an order. “Please.”

Though she frowned, she looked back over to the cadet; he now sat upon the ground, hunched over in clear misery, his skin turned an unhealthy grey. Grudging, she glanced back, looked over all three of them together. “All right.” And her gaze turned heavy on Mara. “But you better not go anywhere without me.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Before her daughter, Mara now went to her knees, hands extended. Rey, very slow, held her own out, rested them in the cradle hers formed. When she smiled, it held a softness both utterly alien to everything Hux knew of her, but then he’d never seen anything so natural, either. “I’ve done many things I am not proud of,” she said, soft, and very serious. “But being your mother is not one of them.”

Rey met her gaze, searching, relentless in a way that made Hux very glad he was not on the receiving end of it. But whatever she saw there, seemed to satisfy her – she nodded, very firm. “I want to know you better.” Before Mara could give anything like a reply she turned away. A few moments later and she was hunkered down beside the shell-shocked boy, one hand already upon his back, coaxing him up to stare at her like she was some newborn sun to a man who had only ever lived in darkness.

Hux shook his head. “I can’t believe she’s just running around like she didn’t just close a wormhole across realities,” he said, for all he could scarcely believe himself that that was actually what had just happened. Mara only shook out her long hair, the silver amongst the crimson glinting bright, and for the first time she actually looked tired.

“That’s the Force, for you,” she said, her words as professional as they had ever been. “But we’re getting to the bit beyond the Force, now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I tipped off the New Republic.” Folding her arms across her chest, she looked between them both, then focused upon Hux. “With all the information they needed to prove that the First Order has violated almost every non-aggression treaty they’ve ever signed.” Her head tilted upwards, to the sky beyond the chamber itself. “And Uyter will shortly come under lockdown, as a known base of their operation.”

“But you timed it so they wouldn’t arrive until…after all of this?”

“Snoke was ours to deal with.” She blinked, only once. “They’ll have to fight the rest of the war themselves.”

He saw no reason to mask his scorn. “What, us non-sensitive plebeians, you mean?”

She took no offense, only took him in: from foot, to the crown of his head. “You, of all people,” she drawled, so easy, “should know that there’s more than one way to rule the worlds.” Now she frowned, glancing back; Rey had sat down beside the boy, whose colour had returned to something healthier; she had one hand upon his lower arm, their voices low, indistinguishable.

“I should go.”

“ _Go_?” he said, even as Kylo started.

“What about Rey?” he demanded. “You can’t just walk away from her.”

“I won’t.” One arm extended, and then encompassed not only the chamber entire, but all the galaxy beyond it. “Still, I’m not dealing with all this bureaucracy.” Her attention, again, fell to Hux. “I do have something for you, though.”

It was something of a miracle he resisted the urge to fold his arms over his chest. “What, more forms to fill in?”

“No.” There was no way of knowing where she’d got it from, but one hand flicked in his direction, a small chip held light between extended fingers. “They’re your father’s security codes.”

He only stared. “Oh.”

“There are also all the codes you need to get back to the starport, and off-planet.” The moment he took it, Mara began gathering the cloak about her shoulders, the hood swiftly pulled up and over the blaze of her hair. “The closures will start soon. But you’ll have time enough to get out.”

Hux turned it over in his hands: so light, and so very small. “Only enough time to get out?”

“Only enough time to do what you need to do.” When he glanced up, her eyes were steady, half-shadowed beneath her cowl. “I’ll return.”

He barely ever saw her leave. But the chip in his hands drew his attention again, and held it strong, until Kylo spoke again.

“What do you want to do?”

Frowning, Hux turned it over one last time. And then, he slipped it deep into one of his pockets. “I think we should go find wherever you left Dameron.” Glancing over to where Rey still talked with the boy, their faces animated and so close together, Hux didn’t bother to hide his grimace. “Though _you_ can tell your cousin where her mother went.”

The expression on Kylo’s face congealed. “She said she’d be back.”

Hux shook his head. “I suspect she’s heard that one before,” he muttered, though he was already turning for the chamber door, already looking ahead. “Come on. We probably don’t have a lot of time before everything starts falling apart.”

 

*****

 

As it turned out, Dameron was not far; Kylo’s madness never seemed to cease, in that he’d apparently instructed the pilot to berth himself at the actual starport. Wisely deciding that could be a story – and a lecture – for an entirely different day, Hux instead moved swift through the crowds, purposefully keeping his gaze away from the enforcer droids who passed amongst them.

At least Kylo had had the sense to comm ahead; the moment they came upon Dameron’s ship, the ramp descended to reveal the pilot himself standing at its height. Even before the venting had finished he was pounding down the durasteel panels, leaping the last few feet to come down at their side. His eyes had lit up to see Rey, though the doubletake was priceless enough that Hux almost wished he’d had a holocamera to hand.

“I…” He glanced over to Hux, eyes widening as he took in the ruin of his clothes. There was no hiding the headshake that followed. “Hey, Red. Didn’t I tell you to be careful out there?”

“Save it, Dameron.” His hand closed over the chip in his hand. “Do you need clearance codes to get us off-planet?”

“No, it’s sorted. All just part of being the best pilot you’ve ever met.” But his humour wavered a little as he looked over, again, to where the two kids stood together. “I just…hey, Rey?”

Rey immediately clamped onto the other kid’s arm, lower lip jutting out, even as he stared at her like she’d run utterly mad. “I’m keeping him,” she announced, even as the boy gave her a look more than a little bewildered. “I don’t care what anyone else says. I’m _keeping_ him!”

“Rey, he’s not a pet,” Hux added with only the slightest reproach; he could hear Kylo muttering something just this side of inaudible. Apparently deciding to ignore them both, Dameron instead looked to Rey’s new friend, his own expression both easy and encouraging.

“What’s your name, kid?”

“I…” For a moment, he looked nothing if not lost. Then he straightened his shoulders and his spine, a gesture that kicked Hux right in the stomach, even before he made it worse by rattling off in military-quick cadence: “FN-2187.”

“What? No. _No_.” Down on one knee now, Poe had his hands on the kid’s upper arms, his dark gaze holding just as tight. “No designations,” he said, and then, sudden: “ _Finn_.”

He blinked up at him, wide honest face confused, but never afraid. “What?”

“Kid, your name is Finn.”

His mouth opened, closed. He didn’t appear to have any words left, but Hux knew enough to suspect he likely had never been permitted many in the first place. A moment later Rey threw her arms around him, pulled him so close he gave an involuntary gasp. “That’s a _great_ name!” she said, then she was pulling back, her face bright and blinding. “Do you want to be an Organa, too?” she asked, and then grinned wider. “Or – you could be a Skywalker!”

Glancing back, the starport appeared no busier than normal, though Hux suspected that it still was not the place for such discussions. “I don’t think the universe needs _more_ Skywalkers,” he muttered, and started at the arm that shifted around his waist.

“Well, it probably has more than enough at the moment,” Kylo murmured, and Hux glanced up, found both his face – and the smile across it – far too close for comfort. The fluttering in his stomach, urgent and odd, only grew by the moment.

“Well, sorry to break up the party, guys, but we should probably get out of here.” Dameron’s voice, and the odd look that accompanied it, had Hux pulling sharply away, even as the pilot waggled the wrist with the comm unit strapped on. “I’m picking up chatter on one of the restricted channels. Apparently, the _real_ party’s about to start.”

Hux nodded, even as Rey began to pull Finn up the ramp. “There’s just one thing I need to do while we’re still in range. Lend me your comm.” Before Dameron could protest his manners, he dug the comm chip from his pocket, felt its cool shape pressed like a brand inside his folded palm. “You all go get on the ship, get the engines running. I won’t be long.”

Kylo’s eyes followed the path of the comm unit, from Dameron’s hands to Hux’s own. “You can’t do it from on the ship?” he asked, and Hux shook his head, brusque as he turned his back on them all, plugging the chip into the slot on its right side.

“I said go get the engines running.” He already had it set to the frequency he needed, eyes flicking only lightly over the data from the chip itself. “I’ll be there in a moment.”

“Sure, Hux.” And, somewhat unnecessarily: “Rey, Finn – come on in.”

Their footsteps faded, though the sound of the port around them only seemed to grow by the moment. Pushing it to the back of his mind, Hux focused entirely upon the small screen, and did not look up even when he felt him by his side.

“You don’t have to stay, Kylo.”

“Sure I do.”

There was nothing to be said to that. Hux found that he didn’t even want to try. But his fingers moved without pause, quick about their chosen work; he’d always been top of his engineering classes. Nothing could be simpler than what he wanted now. And he would take it.

The connection was made; it stuttered a moment, waiting for its answer. Hux had no fear that it would go unanswered. He might have no connection to the Force of his own. But even he did not believe it would be so cruel as to deny him this.

The face filled the tiny screen but a moment later. He smiled, reflexive and easy, and felt Kylo’s flinch at his side. “Hello, Father.”

The man on the other end said but one word, half-choked and startled. “What?”

“I’m not going to explain this to you,” Hux replied, simple. “You don’t deserve it.”

The dirty white of his face said much for the intended effect of the call. But the rage in his words was exactly as it had always been: quick, disgusted, as fierce as his backhand. “This is a recording,” he hissed, and Hux felt his chest vibrate with laughter that never quite escaped. For that, he was glad; it might have turned to a sob, and he would not give Brendol Hux any last pleasure.

“It’s not a recording.” The line of Kylo’s body pressed close to his own, and Hux shrugged. “I’m alive. Despite the fact that you killed me.”

Venomous, now, Brendol leaned back from the screen, his pale eyes alight with a fire kindled to burn worlds whole. “I always knew that I should have broken your neck the moment you were born.”

Even as Kylo stiffened by his side, for a long moment, Hux only regarded his father in studied silence. Snoke’s death had obviously not yet trickled down to the lesser ranks, though the arrival of the New Republic on Uyter’s doorstep would surely be hint enough of the disorder about to be sown amongst his second life’s work. And yet, Hux had no desire to tell him so. He had no need to watch as the man’s worlds crumbled around him, one more time. Vaguely, he wondered if there was any reality where Brendol Hux actually loved his son simply for _being_.

“You know, in a way, it hurts more,” he said, lightly conversational, “what _she_ did, I mean.” His teeth gritted tight, and now his voice rose, ugly and sharp. “But then, she actually gave me something worth living up to. Someone worth having the pride of.” He’d meant the words as an accusation. They came out instead like the pus spilled from a festering, ancient wound. “You never gave me that.”

His lip curled, eyes fixed upon Hux alone. “Well,” he said, and the words were the calmest eye of the last storm of the season. “You never did give me a son worth my name.”

Kylo’s breath had quickened, the air flavoured now with ozone, and the burning edge of iron. Hux ignored it, looked only forward. “You can keep it,” he said, “because I don’t need it.” There was not the slightest regret to his words at all when he added, “Apparently, my mother always intended me to have a better one, anyway.”

His lips twisted beneath the beard; his expression had become that of the hunter scenting fresh blood from his chosen prey. “Do you actually think your mother would be proud of you, boy?”

Hux didn’t break that gaze. “My mother was a Rebel spy.”

“Who let herself get fucked by an Imperial commandant,” he said, just as quick, and he only shook his head. At what felt impossible distance, he could hear the engines of Dameron’s ship turning over, as strong and sure as the cocksure pilot himself.

_Time to go_.

“I don’t know why she did it,” Hux replied, very quiet. “But I’m here now. And I’m changing things, just like she tried to do.” And he shrugged, felt the weight leave his shoulders as he did so. “I think she’d be proud of that.”

“And Maratelle?” That gave him pause, and Brendol knew it. “You think _this_ is the life she wanted for you?”

She’d always been so lovely, so perfect in her carriage and her person. Embodied in her had been the perfect wife to an Imperial officer – save for the fact she’d never given her husband the children the Empire cried out for. But when she’d taken in a child not of her own blood, she’d heeded his cries instead. She’d given him the sweet lullabies, the cool liniments smoothed over aching broken skin. She’d never been able to protect him the way she had wanted to.

“I think, Father, if she were here,” Hux said, without the slightest tremor, “I’d let her press this button herself.”

But one squeeze of his own thumb was all it took. There was no flash of red, no rumble of a weapon powering itself to fire. There was only the sound of a droid, its mechanised tone turning Brendol from the screen. A shout, and then he sprung to his feet and _moved_ , surprisingly limber for the weight gained in his false role as civilian. The shot came next, off-screen – and then sharp silence followed, the screen clear and empty, without the faintest hint of static.

Hux stared, and wondered if he needed to see. A moment later, he simply cut the connection. From beneath the hum of the engines, Kylo’s voice came to him as from across the universe.

“Are you all right?”

“Well,” he said, eyes still fixed upon the scroll of take-off data now marching across Dameron’s comm screen, “accidents do happen, don’t they?”

Somewhere, in the distant, there was a shout. It likely had nothing to do with anything – Snoke’s death, Brendol’s bad end – but Kylo’s body shifted to immediate alert, hand resting upon the hilt of his saber. “Come on,” he said, already turning to the ship.

“No.” Bending his head to the comm, he let instinct take him, and went willingly with it. “I need to make one more call.”

“Hux—”

But he did not force him. Neither did he go. Hux did not look away – though he felt less sure, about this one. Chances were, she had already fled; if anyone would have been likely to hear so soon of Snoke’s demise, surely it would have been the Order’s pet senator.

She picked up but a moment later. The generic greeting died upon her lips, skin turned to the pallor of a woman already in her coffin dead.

It hurt, this time, to smile. So, he didn’t even try. “Hello, Nahani.”

“I…what…”

Her hands had fluttered upwards, to her throat; in that moment, Hux knew what it would be, to reach across space and time and crush someone’s windpipe beneath the heel of his unseen hand. Instead, he used only words to make his kill.

“Say my name,” he said, very soft, his hands curling to fists; her answer was a scarce, ragged whisper.

“What?”

“My name.” His voice rose, unintended shout. “ _Say. It_.”

“Bren—”

And his laughter broke free, wild and unfettered, even as his heart ached fit to break. “You don’t know me,” he gasped. “You don’t even know my _name_.” And then, cold as ice: “And you have no idea what I can do.”

Even as she opened her mouth to speak, he hit the kill switch. And found he was shaking, his eyes blurred, his skin prickling with the adrenaline of the blood that pumped furiously beneath it.

“I probably shouldn’t have done that,” he said, and, ridiculously, wanted only to laugh. “I just—”

“Benny! Armie!” A little head poked out of the ramp, pale and yet somehow stern. “Poe says we gotta go! _Now_!”

“Trust him to send the kid to do his dirty work,” Hux muttered, and then raised an eyebrow at Kylo. He’d meant it to be cool, calm, collected. Instead, he knew that it only reflected the absolute weariness of his entire being. “All right,” he said, louder, now. “We’re done, here.”

Rey disappeared back into the ship, and Hux winced at the loud _thump!_ that followed; and as the two of them began to climb the ramp it followed them up, Rey having apparently hit the switch on her scampered return to the cockpit.

At his side, Kylo kept easy time with him, close enough to touch. “So…” he said, careful, “…can _I_ call you Armie?”

Hux stepped quicker, left him two steps behind, and didn’t look back. “Try it.”

“What, and lose my balls?”

“No.” And he turned, let Kylo walk right into him. “I might need those, in the future.”

“I – what?” Blinking, he abruptly caught on to the fact that they were pressed together, head to toe. “ _Oh_.”

Hux smirked. “Don’t get excited, Organa.”

“Fuck you, Armitage.”

The named shivered through him like an invocation. Hux still didn’t know that he _liked_ it. But it was _his_ , and his alone. He turned, and moved forward. Both Rey and Finn were in the main passenger cabin; from Rey’s clear sulk, she’d been sent back from the cockpit. But at her side, Finn examined everything about him with clear pleasure. As Hux and Kylo strapped themselves in, Rey relented, her voice a low constant stream in the background as she began to detail to Finn more of what life away the Order might offer.

And when Kylo spoke, he did so quiet enough that neither kid would hear. “You wanted to kill her, too,” he said, and it was not a question. “Didn’t you.”

Hux looked to the window, to where the starport was already beginning to lower beneath their rising ship. “We don’t always get what we want, Kylo.”

For all the roar of the engines, Kylo’s soft words echoed through him as if they’d been shouted. “I got you.”

“So you did.” Hux turned from Uyter, looked to Kylo alone. “So let’s go home.”

His small voice would have better belonged to some other version of him – a child, perhaps, uncertain in both his power and his place. “Really?”

He snorted. “Where else would we go?”

“Well.” His eyes shifted, glanced back to the swiftly vanishing city. “There _is_ the whole galaxy.”

“So there is.” And, before he could regret it, he reached out, clasped his fingers tight about Kylo’s own. “But we could start there, perhaps?”

And as the ship jumped to hyperspace, clearing the planet’s gravity, Kylo’s wide, aching smile proved all the answer Hux had ever needed.


	9. Chapter 9

He’d lied about his expected arrival time. Still, when Hux glanced up from the holoscreens before him to find Kylo Organa leaning against the doorway, he couldn’t really be angry about it.

Though he certainly could pretend to be. “Do you have _no_ manners at all?” he demanded, sitting back in his chair with hands pressed flat against the desk between them; Kylo only smirked wider, head tilted in clear invitation.

“Well, I _was_ raised by a princess and a scoundrel,” he replied, the perfect picture of privileged indolence, and Hux snorted.

“What does that make you, then? A scoundrel princess?”

“Well, I do have the hair for it, don’t I?” Shaking it out was very nearly unnecessary, for Kylo so perfectly _did_ ; even though Hux had seen its new style more than once already, it had always been through the medium of holo only. It was so much different to see it now before him, dark bright gleam under the lights of his office; much lengthened, it lay thick and soft about the soft lines of that familiar face, curling around the shoulders that had only broadened more by what felt like the very day.

“Kylo,” he said, and then paused. When he tried, again, still he failed. “Kylo…”

And Kylo, damn his Skywalker soul, actually laughed out loud. “The great Armitage Hux, rendered speechless!” he proclaimed, his delight a tangible thing upon the heated air. “I really am the best not-Jedi in the galaxy.” And then, his grin still not lessening the slightest inch, “Would you like to see my sword?”

Hux’s tongue did occasionally get the better of him. “Flesh or laser?”

“Armie!” The admonition almost sounded genuine. “That’s hardly appropriate for _work hours_!” All the same he stepped closer, eyes far too bright. “But no. I really do want to show it to you.” Delving into the dark robes he wore, grey and black, he unearthed it but a moment later: a shaft of hefty diameter, long and very solid, its construction oddly simple. Pressing the button, it erupted before him into a shimmering blue-green blade, almost kaleidoscopic in the shift of its colour over said spectrum.

And Hux, for a moment, felt utterly hypnotised. “…it’s lovely.”

A few strokes upon the air, and Kylo inclined his wrist. “Do you want to try?”

Beautiful as the new lightsaber truly was, Hux could do nothing to hold back the shudder that moved through him; he remembered all too well the weight of the previous one in his hand, for all it had been over a year ago now. “No. It’s fine.”

And Kylo’s eyes reflected the blade, thoughtful and deep. “I thought of you, while I built it. The whole time.”

He frowned. “I’m not the only important thing in your life, Kylo.”

“Maybe not.” The seriousness of that gaze crept close, crawled under his skin; Hux sometimes still dreamed of him. Of the hound.

“But you’re still pretty pfassking important,” Kylo murmured, and Hux only sighed.

“Put it away, Kylo.”

Without an argument, Kylo returned it to his belt. Slipping the outer robes off, he then sprawled upon the couch just across from the desk; Hux himself had spent more than one evening stretched out upon its cramped length, when late nights had made it hardly worth the considerable effort of retreating back to the even more cramped apartment he’d been assigned halfway across the city. With the shifting of the senate coming quicker than expected, Hosnian Prime hadn’t exactly been prepared for the influx of politicians and endless support staff it had suffered; the mobilisation of military across all systems only had it bulging ever further at its seams.

Hux himself had been a part of the earliest arrivals. Leia Organa, a veteran of such organisations, spearheaded the effort from its inception, deeply investing herself in the resistance against this newly exposed enemy. Snoke _had_ been at its very centre – but the First Order had been born of Imperial exiles, those who learned quick to exist in scattered cells across the Unknown Regions. Even with the apparent head of their command chain dead, they had enough contingency plans to be not so easily destroyed. Though his own experience had been with them in his earliest youth, it had been another part of the reasoning behind Hux being summoned to join her staff.

But her son had returned to his uncle. Kylo had not been exactly a Jedi, then – and he was not now, and likely never would be. Hux had seen enough of the Force to understand that that likely did not matter. Yet, for all Kylo had seemingly had little doubt over the return itself, especially with Rey at his side, he had been so uncertain at their own parting. Skywalker had attempted to soften the blow, though Hux had had little doubt his own partner would have hauled Kylo onto the ship if he’d changed his mind.

“While you might not necessarily be able to make realtime calls,” Skywalker had said, “you can always make holovids, and send them.”

He’d immediately glanced to Hux, hopeful and sly. “ _Dirty_ holovids?”

“ _Kylo_!”

Mara, at Skywalker’s side, spoke mildly enough. “I don’t see why not. It’s how Luke and I survive.”

“ _Mara_!”

Even as Rey’s own expression turned curious – and her father, lightly green – Hux had kept his eyes on Kylo alone. In the end, Mara wouldn’t have needed to force him to board that shuttle; Hux himself would have bundled him aboard had it come to that. “We have time, Kylo,” he’d said, and watched as Kylo’s lips curved into a low frown.

“In the middle of a war?”

Coming close, Hux had murmured the last words directly upon his lips. “That’s the life we know.” And he’d smiled, drifting backward. “We’ll live it.”

Looking to him, now, Hux narrowed his gaze, made sure to keep his voice light and official. “I should finish this work.”

Raising his hands, Kylo allowed them to shift in lazy spread beneath the shrug of shoulders. “Don’t let me stop you.”

But it felt as though Hux had played only himself; while Kylo seemed content enough down upon the couch – not quite meditating, perhaps, but definitely fallen to deeper thought – Hux could barely keep his own attention upon his screens. The charge of the air shifted about him as a caress; even his mind, orderly as it was, could not help but wander under such onslaught. Finally he reached down, slammed the heel of one hand against the panel’s killswitch perhaps a _little_ too hard. Kylo glanced up with what appeared to be surprise, but Hux knew the impishness in those eyes just a little too well. And so, when he spoke, he kept it just a little too simple.

“Shall we have dinner?”

That, at least, left Kylo dumbstruck. “ _Dinner_?”

Standing, fussing with the high collar of his tunic, he raised one unimpressed eyebrow. “I don’t put out without getting dinner first, Kylo.”

“A little high maintenance, aren’t we.” Still, he’d already reached for his own robes; a moment later, he tilted an elbow with all the grace of a prince to his escort. “Shall we, then?”

Despite the brief appearance of Kylo’s very best manners, there was nothing fancy to be had in the caf ten levels down. It had always been too noisy for real conversation, besides, and certainly not private enough for what they really wanted of one another.

Still, Hux managed to get halfway through his stew before he asked the most obvious question. “Your mother knows you’re here, yes?”

A brief look of guilt moved quick over his features. “She still thinks I’m coming in the morning.” Kylo then busied himself with stabbing an entirely helpless root vegetable. “I’ll go see her, then.”

“So where are you staying tonight?”

Startled, Kylo looked up. “You’re playing coy _now_?”

It would have been such an easy tease, and no less the enjoyable for it. Still, the faintest hint of apprehension behind his eyes did temper Hux’s worst excesses. “Kylo,” he said, and set his utensil down. “I said my feelings wouldn’t change.”

Kylo’s own eyes dropped to his plate. “But the galaxy has.”

“The galaxy never stops changing,” he said, half-exasperated, half-explanatory. And he looked up, the hope in his eyes reminding Hux of the younger man he’d first met.

“So I _can_ stay with you?”

He almost sighed. He went for sultry instead. “I don’t intend to let you out of my sight, so.”

Glancing down didn’t hide the slow swallow. Taking pity on him, again, Hux did not take any longer over their meal. The subsequent speeder ride itself proved surprisingly quick, the city’s congested traffic caught in an unexpected lull; neither of them spoke, but Hux felt Kylo’s heavy gaze on him all the way home.

A brief elevator ride later, and Hux quietly let them in his front door. Almost immediately a small creature came close, bunting up against his calves; she had always appeared more fur than flesh, a deep reddish colour not unlike Hux’s own hair. Even as Hux secured the door closed behind them, Kylo reached down, picking her up. The warning died on his lips as she snuggled close, rather than pressing needle-sharp claws into the jugular.

“I know you said you had a pet,” Kylo said, half-muffled by the fluff her, “but I didn’t actually believe you.”

“You think I’d lie to you?”

“I think you’d stretch the truth to fit whatever needs you have.” His amusement rolled off hi in waves, rich and welcoming. “You’re a bigshot politician, now.”

“Hardly,” he said, ignoring the delight that accompanied the vague truth of those words. “Do you want a drink?”

“Now that I’m legal.” And the skin around those dark bright eyes creased deeper with fresh mischief. “Sure. I’ll have a drink.”

Hux didn’t have much of a balcony. It still had a minor view: one of the city, a sea of lights stretched calm and wide before them. It would never feel as not as claustrophobic or all-encompassing as Corsuscant; for all the city reached to the horizon, it still felt somehow smaller. Closer.

_More like it could be home_.

“Are you happy?” Kylo asked, sudden; at his feet, Millicent nudged closer, purring like a small motor. Hux reached absently down, passed a hand over her small head.

“As I can be, I suppose.” Straightening, he took a deep sip of the wine, tilted one eyebrow. “And you?”

It was a fair question, for all they passed messages back and forth regularly enough that there ought to be little left to discover about one another. But Kylo frowned down, into his glass; for all he’d asked for it, his drink was barely touched. But then he looked up, and without breaking their gaze, set it aside.

The lips on his were warm, their motion not quite practiced. Hux leaned into it all the same, missing them the moment Kylo leaned away, breathed against him.

“Is this okay?”

With his free hand on his chest, Hux gently inclined him back. “Let’s go inside.”

He didn’t have any real concern that a propaganda bot would be out there somewhere in the night, spying on Leia Organa’s latest political protégé – but with his Imperial heritage, he’d never really appreciated dicing with that sort of scrutiny. The accusations about Vader and her biological parentage had raged strong in the earliest days of this new war, but they had all risen above it. Hux still felt no great desire to share this development in this particular relationship with all the worlds.

Millicent seemed none too pleased about being carefully shut away in the little galley that passed for his kitchen, even with the food and water bowls generously refilled. Ignoring her mewls, and then closing the privacy shutters, Hux turned to find Kylo standing there: so tall and broad, almost awkward and oversized in his small living room. “Get comfortable,” Hux said, and his brow creased.

“What do you mean?”

Already in sock feet, Hux stripped them bare. His tunic followed, neatly folded; once set aside, it left him only in the shirt he wore beneath, and the belted trousers. Kylo, with lips pressed together, paused but a moment. Then the outer robes were cast aside, leaving him only in trousers, and the short-sleeved undershirt.

Hux stretched out a hand, closed the fingers over one upper arm. “My, my,” he said, lightly mocking. “You _have_ gotten big.”

“That’s…a little creepy.” Kylo raised both eyebrows, though he didn’t pull away. “You know that, right?”

“Whatever, Kylo.” Still he smiled as he indicated the couch and armchair that sat kitty corner to one another. “Have a seat.”

Kylo took the chair; Hux reclined on the couch. Slightly perplexed, Kylo opened his mouth; Hux promptly leaned over, pressed a soft kiss to his lips. It was eagerly returned. And Kylo did always prove such a swift learner.

Shifting forward, Hux grew bolder, one hand now resting upon a thick thigh. Tightening his grip drew a gratifying groan, though he didn’t linger long; already his fingers traced a burning path upward, snaking up beneath the hem of the shirt. With the palm pressed over the muscle beneath, Kylo’s breath, already quickened, caught on a single choked word.

“Hux—”

“You want me to stop?” he said, enjoying perhaps a little too much the sharp dilation of pupils, the high flush over cheekbones. He fluttered those fingertips a little more, and a shuddering gasp shot through him, Hux tracing its passage just beneath the dampening skin.

“No, I just…”

“You can tell me what you want.”

But he did not. Kylo instead lunged forward, his own hands both clumsy and utterly determined. Opening Hux’s shirt, button by trembling button, Kylo then pushed it firmly off his shoulders. Even as Hux watched, he appeared to lose himself, again. A shuddering breath brought him back, though he leaning back into his chair, as if utterly overwhelmed. Hux followed him anyway, kissing deep. But as Kylo’s own hand stole towards his groin, Hux pulled away.

“ _Please_.”

He almost chuckled. “You don’t have to beg.”

“Oh. Really?” The arch look he gave him was far too knowing. “I kind of always thought that would be your thing.”

“I take what I want,” Hus said instead, perfectly airy. “And I already know we want the same thing.”

It took little coaxing to get Kylo out of his trousers. The underwear he still wore already strained beneath Kylo’s rising interest; it was all too easy to push it aside, to coax his half-hard cock out even while leaving them largely in place. There, Hux paused, mouth half-opened on words that never did find their way to actual sound. He’d never seen it before, even when their rare conversations over the holo had become heated. From Hux’s end, he had always been privy to nothing more than the rhythmic shift of his shoulder and arm, the hand and its actual target always just off-screen. He had long known it from dreams, he supposed. But this was his reality.

And this, now, was _his_.

Still, his fingers shifted just a moment from actual touch, and he glanced up with a cool, clear gaze. “Are you sure about this?”

One dark eyebrow cocked itself high. “Are you _really_ asking that question?”

It made sense that Kylo would remain smart-assed as usual, but Hux could still sense the faint tang of bravado, salty and strange on his lips. Just for the sheer amusement of it all, he ran his tongue over them, then revelled in pleasured accomplishment at the way Kylo’s eyes immediately dropped to follow its path, pupils black and widening by the moment.

Dipping his head, Hux found a new use for them but a moment later: following a damp path, one forged by his tongue up and along the length of the shaft. But he let the tongue take charge at its end, the flatness of it pressed hard over a too-sensitive head. Even as Kylo hissed through clenched teeth, it thickened to full hardness. Grinning wider, Hux set about taking him deep.

Oddly, Kylo did not let him do it long. Shifting back, with hands that trembled but faintly, Kylo encouraged him back to his feet. There, his fingers caught first in his belt; tossing it aside, within the next moment his trousers and the basics were together slid from his hips to his bare feet. A pause, just long enough for Hux to step free and for Kylo to shove them aside, and then: his own fully-hard cock disappeared between Kylo’s lips. Though he sucked it not deep, he worked with clear enthusiasm. But the inexperience had a charm of its own, even as Hux let out a trembling sigh.

“Have you been watching instructional holos, Kylo?”

Pulling off with an entirely undignified _pop_ , he looked up, wide-eyed – in fact, he seemed but a moment away from horrified. “What?”

Unable to resist such sweetened temptation, Hux gentled one hand over his hair, motion similar to how he might have soothed Millicent when she threw a snit. “It’s fine,” he said, and gave just a little shrug. “It’s nice to know you wanted to impress me.”

At first, he only stared, mouth half-open; it degenerated all too quickly into an outright sulk. Biting back on laughter, Hux shifted his weight back in the chair, stretching long legs before himself. Kylo’s eyes rose just enough to follow the movement, getting caught on the gifted expanse of smooth white thigh.

Then, he set his jaw. “All right. If that’s the way you want it to be.” Pulling back, straightening to his own full height, his voice deepened in sudden demand. “Turn around.”

Hux, his lazy posture bordering now on the outright insolent, only raised an eyebrow “What?”

“Yes, I have been watching _instructional_ holos,” he replied, but something had crept into his voice – knowing in a way that had Hux suppressing something he knew was sheer delight. “There’s something I want to try.”

Though he rose, doing his level best not to appear over-eager, Kylo had him back on the chair a moment later; with arms braced upon its back, Hux leaned forward, ass firmly in the air. Kylo’s hands, warm and terribly sure, pulled his hips back, arching them slightly higher. Then, they withdrew. As the pause grew ever longer, Hux shifted, heard a low hiss. Frowning, he chanced a look back, over his shoulder.

“Kylo?”

He was still there – but in a daze, eyes fixed on his exposed rear end, hands halfway to his own chest, and so very, very still.

“ _Kylo_!”

At the sharpness of it, Kylo shook himself free – and almost immediately a high flush took his cheeks, turned them deep and blazing red. Hux rolled his eyes, turned back to face the wall; really, it was the only way to hide his smirk. Rattling off a low litany of what were no doubt Corellian curses, Kylo came forward now, closed hands bruise-tight on his ass. The cheeks pulled apart, and without the slightest fanfare, his mouth pressed up against him. He did it without hesitation, only: _need_. For his own part Hux had rarely had experienced the sensation; already lost, cursing now himself, chin pressed into his breastbone, he fought desperately to catch something of his breath back, even as he knew he’d only fail.

Kylo paused not at all in his own work. It seemed he had more of a natural flair for eating ass than cock sucking, but Hux’s mind had by now so blurred beyond coherent thought that it hardly seemed to matter. It did not help at all that curious fingers had already shifted forward, drawn first to the hang of his balls, then teasing at the base of the cock itself.

“Kylo,” he said, breathless still, “if you don’t stop, I’ll come.”

It seemed he would not; that damned tongue still lapped and pressed against the furl of opening muscle, something about the pulsing pressure of it so much like laughter. When he withdrew, Hux could barely take a full breath into his tight chest. “So?” he panted, and Hux just _knew_ he smirked. “I want to see it.” And then, a bizarrely gentle kiss pressed to the small of his back. “I want to _taste_ it.”

With the edges of his vision turned to white, Hux clenched his eyes tight until each of the silver bursts settled down. Relaxing the fingers clenched into the arms of the chair, he turned, and found it so hard to lever himself up. “Come with me.”

Though Hux tried to move quick, he could feel Kylo crowding him from behind; the heat of the cock shoved up against his ass reminded him with every step just exactly what he was missing. Only at the doorway of the small bedroom did Kylo slow, though Hux continued on to the nightstand. From the top drawer he extracted a bottle of lubricant, perhaps a quarter full.

When he turned back to Kylo, he found him staring at it with some admiration – and not a little jealousy, amusingly enough. “You get a lot of use out of that, then?”

“Yes.” Shifting his hips, he sauntered to the bed, felt the gratifying shift of Kylo’s eyes once again to his ass. “I’ll show you,” he added. “And don’t you move an inch.”

To his credit, he didn’t, even as Hux set himself before him on his hands and knees; it had to be a tempting sight, to have that ass so angled back towards him. Hux set about making it all the worse, slick fingers scissoring and sliding as they shifted in the warm depths of his own body.

Only when Kylo’s breaths had hitched just the right amount did he withdraw them again, with a sigh entirely too loud and too heavy. “Now, Kylo,” he said, coyly glancing back over one shoulder. “Would you like to try?”

Though he seemed himself unconscious of the movement, the way Kylo’s tongue licked over those damp lips all but tortured Hux with the shivering memory of them, pressed against the flutter of his asshole. “With fingers?” he asked, and Hux arched back, gave a low humming moan.

“I think it’s time for cock.” Then, he shrugged as if he’d just suggested Coruscanti instead of Corellian for dinner. “If that’s all right with you, I mean.”

The weight of that great body pressed upon him but a moment later; so close, Hux couldn’t catch his groan. It seemed to bolster Kylo, even as his hips adjusted themselves with a distinctly uncertain shift. When the thick head pressed against him, Hux gathered his lips between his teeth, but said nothing. A long, tense moment passed, one in which Hux came close to admitting it might not ever fit. Even when it slid in, the head pressing deep, the thick shaft had him hissing with every centimetre.

Yet, he could not deny he desired it: and when he had fully seated himself, Kylo paused, chest pressed to his back, heartbeat a quicksilver thunder against his skin. The gasp of hot breath beside his ear had him grinning, but before he could say a word, Kylo pulled out. Hissing at the stretch, Hux still revelled in the pull, just the right side of actual pain. Then, _in_ , again – and he gasped at the pressure along every shrieking nerve within.

But several thrusts later, he had to admit he’d been too optimistic. “Kylo.” The heat of him moved onward, growing heavier by the second. “ _Kylo_.”

Hux was on the verge of reaching back, pinching him on one great thigh when at last he paused, voice thick and half-choked. “What?”

“Stop.”

“…what?”

“ _Stop_.” He spoke it just hard enough that Kylo did pull back, pulling out in the process, just a little too quick for Hux’s comfort. With a wince, he shifted over, glanced up – and then paused to see the clear hurt displayed upon his face. It was but reflex to reach up, close one hand about the nape of his neck – and then jerk him down for a kiss, open-mouthed and sloppy.

And when he needed to breathe, again, he pulled back only so far that their lips still touched. “You’re big,” he whispered, smirking at the way Kylo’s eyes widened.

“I—”

“It’s a bit much. This first time.” Now his voice turned less cajoling, more commanding. “Get on your back.”

For a moment, the tenseness remained. Then it subsided, a tide running back out to the ocean deep. “Bossy as always,” he observed, eyes taking a light sparkle. In return Hux rolled his own, hands again braced upon his chest in order to shove him back.

“Do you want me to ride you or not?”

“… _ride_?”

His surprise made him so easy a target; pushing him down and over was far easier than it had any right to be. It still had Hux’s dick twitching even as he looked to Kylo’s own cock, jutting up from the cradle of his hips. Straddling them felt almost too easy, hands now braced upon the space between shoulder and throat. Tightening his fingers, a little, he felt the responding shift of hard muscle. With a low smirk he leaned down before the mouth opened to voice his complaint. Another kiss, and Kylo forgot everything else, pressing back and up. Hux, however, could scarcely remain unaware of that monstrous cock, shifting along the slick crease of his own ass.

Much as he’d have liked to just keep his hands on Kylo’s shoulders, using them as a brace to work out his pleasure against, he knew nothing was ever quite so simple. Instead, Hux found himself reaching behind, re-slicking the cock with the excess lubricant upon his own hands before setting about guiding him in. From the shuddering breaths, Kylo was not far from release. But then, he’d held up admirably well, given it was only his first time.

_But then, we’ve had our practice._

A faint prickling heat moved over his skin: Hux recognised it easily as purest satisfaction. Having Kylo beneath him this way only made his dick ache all the harder, and not only for the pressure pressed hard against his prostate. To be here, above him, while Kylo fisted his hands in Hux’s own covers, broad chest moving in quickfire breath, the great body straining against the rich pleasure – Hux knew true power. He _wanted_ true power.

But, in its own way, this was almost enough.

As if in reflex, Kylo thrust suddenly up, utterly at odds with the slow rhythm Hux had chosen instead; though it unseated him, it didn’t matter. Hux instead clenched tight about his dick even as his weight fell forward; at such close quarters, he chuckled to watch as Kylo’s eyes turned glazed and distant, the faint sound of something innocent and true dying upon his lips. The pulsing heat, deep inside, had Hux sighing, fingertips light upon one cheekbone as the stiffened body relaxed, gone satiated and still.

And then, at the tinkle of glass, the thump of something far heavier, Hux glanced sharply sideways. Then, he frowned. “Kylo?”

He’d thrown his forearm over his eyes, chest sheened with sweat and still rising and falling in slowing beat. “What?”

And Hux, still with the softening dick in his ass, poked him hard in the sternum. “Look at the mess you’ve made.”

For a moment, it seemed like he wouldn’t; even just this short introduction to actual sex seemed to have taken from him the will to do anything but sleep. Then, frowning, he cracked his eyes just a little – then, they _widened_. “I…”

Pursing his own lips, Hux then clucked his tongue as he himself took in the proper ruin of his bedroom. “You better pick all this up.”

But before he could mock how even a year’s training had not taught Kylo true control over his Force abilities, his right hand closed suddenly on his cock: strong, callused, _quick_. He pushed at it with one hand for only a second, all complaints disappearing; apparently, Kylo had spent said year getting _plenty_ of practice at one hand on a dick. Within moments Hux’s mind emptied of all else but pleasure. All else but _Kylo_.

Much as Kylo seemed content to lie in the afterglow to the point of sleep, Hux himself stirred not long after they had both flopped down together upon the bed. But even as he levered himself upward, Kylo’s hand closed about his wrist: strong, but somehow oddly gentle with it, too.

“How long before we can do that again?”

Hux gave a sigh, one far more exaggerated in its irritation than the glorious ache of him really ought to allow for. “Now you’re just being greedy.”

“I’m making up for lost time,” he said, and any petulance that might have coloured those words disappeared but a moment later as Kylo followed him upward; his arms were strong and warm about his waist, flushed cheek pressed hard to one shoulder. “I just…don’t want to lose any more time.”

“Kylo.” This sigh felt far more real, even as the natural rigidity of his spine softened against such encompassing onslaught. “Contrary to what all you Force-sensitives seem to think, you can’t just save the galaxy overnight.”

“Maybe not,” he said, the words muffled both by skin, and something far less tangible. “But I think I’m ready to never spend another one of those nights away from you.” He raised his head, now, and Hux turned his own even as he added, so close to a vow, “Not unless I have to.”

His brow furrowed. “You’re not going back to Skywalker?”

“He’s coming here,” he said, and though they were so close, that odd distance had skipped across the dark shadows of his eyes. “We can’t train forever. There’s a war on, after all.” But so quick did he turn his gaze back to Hux himself, his eyes the deep dark matter of a deadstar’s heart. “And it’s one we are going to win.”

Something in his abdomen tightened, like a child clutching at some aged, battered toy. “How can you be so sure?”

“Because we both want it.” Kylo smiled, one hand slipping down, fingertips teasing at a cock not quite ready to go again. Not yet, at least. “And you, and me – we can have anything we want.”

Batting said hand away, Hux turned in the circle of his arms, gave him the haughtiest look he’d ever master. “Oh, we can, can we?”

“Yes.” And those hands reflexively drawing him ever nearer even as he chuckled against his skin, whispered against his lips: “Yes, we can. If we want it badly enough.”

 

*****

 

_He’s never been much for dreams. But he lies here, silent and still. He has watched it. All of it. Two men, who are them, but then: they are not. They are happy, and the general has never even been content._

_It could just be his overactive imagination, he supposes. He’s always assumed that much of his reasons for never dreaming come from the fact he has always busied his mind with other matters. There has never been time for anything else._

_But now, there is nothing else left._

_He stands. A small cell is all he had been assigned, but it proved large enough for what he requires of it, in these last hours – he cannot say that it has not been equipped with all that is necessary. He doesn’t allow himself to dawdle now as he uses the attached ‘fresher, making so very careful that when it is over, he is cleaned, tidied, the uniform smooth and straight upon his rigid body. But he does pause, one long moment, as he stares into the small mirror supplied him._

_The appointed hour is nearly come. General Armitage Hux now will die. He has come to terms with that. He never would have thought anything otherwise, if not for him. If not for this…other. This burgeoning senator and his not-Jedi partner. He will live on – they_ both _will live on. And there is not a reason in all the universe why this former general should take comfort in that._

_And yet, somehow, he_ does _._

_A knock disturbs his reverie. It is not the business-like sound it should have been. Frowning, Hux turns, steps forward from the ‘fresher with hands in parade rest at the small of his back, head held high, the cap perched perfectly upon the order of his crimson hair._

_The door wrenches open, a figure hunched and breathing hard taking up all but the smallest space. And Hux’s hands fall away, eyes gone wide._

_“Ren?”_

_The smile he wars is half-mad – but then, it is also oh so very_ glad.

_“What are you_ doing _here?” he asks, but he should have known. Maybe he_ had _always known. Because Ren’s hands are upon his shoulders, dragging him close, his mouth tasting of ozone and iron. And when he pulls back, his eyes are everything and nothing._

_“What we should have done from the very beginning,” he whispers, and his voice is the rough ready hum of charged stormcloud. “Don’t you know?”_

_It’s as demanding as it is pleading. He closes his eyes. He could take the easy way out, even now. There is always an easy way out._

_The general opens his eyes, and looks only to his knight. “All right, then,” he says, and smiles against his bloodied lips. “Let’s go kill Snoke.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and...that's the end.
> 
> ...
> 
> ...I started this story back in _April_ last year, and after being discouraged as fuck by some feedback I got on it, I always assumed it would never be finished. But I had an even shittier life event happen in March this year, and by all rights I shouldn't even be here today. But I am. And I thought "what the hell, just finish it." So, I did. Right now I'm staring at it thinking "you done messed up, clarice" but...it's the first properly longfic I've finished in almost three years. Therefore, whatever else this fic is, it's still _finished_.
> 
> But even though I just kind of gave up and gave over to these last few chapters, I still couldn't have done it without the readers. Thank you for being there. You are everything. <3


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